TUAC NEWS
Executive Excess 2008: The divide between CEO and worker pay in the U.S.
20/10/2008
A report on “Executive Excess 2008. How Average Taxpayers Subsidize Runaway Pay. 15th Annual CEO Compensation Survey”, published by the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies, has revealed that CEOs in the United States, despite the current hard economic times, continue to pocket outlandishly large pay packages. CEOs of companies listed in the S&P 500 stock market index [which comprises 500 large-cap American companies and covers about 75% of the American equity market by capitalization] last year averaged $10.5 million, 344 times the pay of typical American workers. Compensation levels for private investment fund managers soared even further out into the pay stratosphere. Last year, the top 50 hedge and private equity fund managers averaged $588 million each, more than 19,000 times as much as typical U.S. workers earned.
Moreover, it was found that average U.S. taxpayers subsidize executive compensation — by more than $20 billion per year — via a variety of tax and accounting loopholes. That $20 billion for America’s most powerful is more than double what the federal government spent last year on educating America’s most vulnerable — children with disabilities.
To read more or to download the complete report, click
here:
http://www.faireconomy.org/files/executive_excess_2008.pdf