5.25.2006

malcolm gladwell

Prior to last night's Dream League game, a couple of us were discussing Malcolm Gladwell. My opinion is that The Tipping Point was better than Blink, and most of his New Yorker articles are good, but there are still some misses. I haven't read his latest article/book review yet, but it looks thought-provoking as it's sports related.

I had mentioned to my teammates that he has his own blog, http://gladwell.typepad.com/, and today I found an interesting piece on CEO salaries.

CEO Pay, from gladwell.com
After reading the article in the New York Times yesterday on the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation given over the past few years to the CEO of Home Depot, I ran across this: in 1949, the highest paid CEO in America was Charlie Wilson of General Motors, who earned $586,100 in salary, bonus and stock. That's roughly equivalent to what some of the better-compensated CEO's are making today. But what did Wilson pay in taxes? $430,350. Times have changed.


This fact, in conjuction with today's ruling on Lay and Skilling, show that there's something wrong with executive payouts in this day and age.

3 comments:

mike said...

I wonder how Chuck Norris would do as a CEO?

Kujo said...

i heard the CEO's at google pay themselves $1.00 a year. but it don't matter cause they're still rich as shit with all the stocks they own and can sell.

Chuck Norris frequently signs up for beginner karate classes, just so he can "accidentally" beat the shit out of little kids.

mike said...

hey, those google guys are awesome, so i wouldn't mind if they paid themselves a little more.

google = chuck norris of the internet