Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As Americans go into what will presumably be the last act of the Washington unreality show that constitutes raising the debt limit and possibly erasing at least part of the budget deficit, it is definitely worth looking at a study commissioned by The New York Times on the pay of the country's top executives.
As gauged by Equilar, an executive compensation data firm, in a nutshell, the median pay of top executives at 200 of America's big companies in 2010 rose 23 percent from 2009. That median pay level stood at $10.8 million, including cash bonuses and stock grants.
The highest pay went to Viacom's CEO, Philippe R. Dauman, who was paid an almost unimaginable $84.5 million. The highest paying companies were in the media, oil, commodity and technology fields. Another example was Comcast's CEO, Brian L. Roberts, who took home $28.2 million.
In the meantime, the average American worker earned $752 a week, or $39,104 a year as his median pay, a pathetic 0.4 percent of what the top executives earned. His pay rose 0.5 percent from 2009 to 2010, as opposed to the 23 percent increase the executives received. U.S. unemployment stands at 9.2 percent, with some 14.1 million Americans jobless.
Read more:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11200/1161274-192.stm#ixzz1SYZhoTfU