Madame Defarge Watch: Pay Disparity in US Exceeds France Under Its Last King

[Hannah Bell]

"The Wall Street Journal Economics Blog today featured an update of a chart prepared by Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, comparing the compensation of French and American civil servants, with an update (click to enlarge)"

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/madame-defarge-watch-pay-disparity-in.html

"...So the popular perception is right. The super wealthy today are better off than royalty of old. And it's not due to indoor plumbing, either."

[woodwrite]

1. Another (and more recent) illustrative example

Would be the mind-numbing disparity between the compensation of American CEO's versus that of their European and Japanese counterparts, when that compensation is expressed as a multiple of the average pay received by their employees. I recall reading a few years back that the typical German CEO was paid roughly 60 times what one of his company's employees averaged, while the "typical" American CEO snagged something like 200 times the annual pay of his own employees. Of course, there are plenty of exec's out there beating that margin tenfold these days.

And by the way, I was told recently by the former CFO of the Qwest phone company that the biggest single scam in executive pay nowadays was the failure to recognize bonuses and stock deals as what they are,.... profits of the company being squirreled away by the high and mighty, while not being properly taxed,.....

[eridani]

2. Wasn't that Qwest guy the one who refused to cooperate with the spying program?

If so, Obama should hire him.

[Hannah Bell]

3. "profits of the company being squirreled away by the high and mighty, not being properly taxed"

yes! thank you! the whole subject deserves a serious analysis, the scams that potentially follow from it ...global capital/investment flows, kick-backs to the owners of the corps what paid em, money-laundering...

the big earners wouldn't be making the big money if they weren't doing what the folk controlling the corps wanted. which suggests they wanted to suck money out & send it elsewhere under the radar.