Those Overpaid Executives

Barry Diller, CEO if IAC/Interactive received $469 million last year. At the same time, shareholders in his company lost 7.7% on their investments. Outsize pay for poor performance may seem inexplicable, until you understand that Diller owns 56 per cent of the voting stock in IAC. In essence, he chooses the board members who decide his pay. IAC claims that the generous compensation package was needed to "motivate Mr. Diller for the future." $150,000 per hour is pretty good motivation. Motivation, I presume, to guide the company to another year of 7.7 per cent losses?

And then, of course, there was the example of Kenneth Lay at Enron.

After all, obscene pay is the rule rather than the exception in the executive suite. These days, the average CEO pockets 369 times as much as the average worker, up from 36 times in 1976. Does anyone believe for a minute that these CEOs also pay 369 times as much income tax as the average workers? Do they contribute 369 times as much as average workers contribute to charities?

This executive overpayment is exceeded in absurdity only by the ridiculous amounts that we pay to athletes and entertainers, who contribute even less to society than the CEOs. The only consolation is that the athletes and entertainers also do less damage.

In the meanwhile, the individuals who have truly contributed to the advancement, health, and well-being of mankind, the Salks, the Schweitzers, hundreds of social workers, fire fighters, educators, and their kind live relatively humble, simple, and uncluttered lives.

All of the excess wealth, literally billions of dollars, could be being used to provide health care for the indigent, to provided food and shelter for the homeless, or to develop alternative fuels to replace oil. There are dozens of beneficial uses. Instead, the money goes to the purchase of multiple mansions with entertainment centers, fine clothes, multiple fancy automobiles, yachts, airplanes, gambling, and all of that sort of conspicuous consumption. Or it is hidden in offshore accounts, only to be handed later to lazy, shiftless offspring for more wasteful spending. Ironically, the super-rich are able to rationalize all of this, to ignore the people that they have injured as they amassed their fortunes.

No human being really earns or deserves the enormous masses of wealth these gluttonous individuals accumulate unto themselves. Only a few of them, like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey recognize the need to share their wealth with the people who truly need it.

For the others, the internal lust for money and power makes them the most selfish and heartless individuals on earth. Nothing they are doing or will do can compensate for the harm they have done, for the livelihoods that they have ruined or stolen.

But where is the public outcry? Do our legislators speak up? Do we see proposed legislation to eliminate these tremendous sumps of human greed? Of course not--most of our legislators are themselves recipients of gigantic paychecks, executive perks, and generous (non-Social Security) pension rewards. The greedy are too busy amassing their own fortunes to punish each other.

Surely, each of us looks out for himself first. Most of us work hard to establish a degree of security and comfort for self and family. Once we achieve that in a reasonable, moderate degree, we should turn our efforts toward helping others achieve the same. When we figure out how to eliminate, or at least to punish, unbridled human greed for power and fortune, we will be on our way to solving many of mankind's most irksome problems.