Originally posted by serpicolugnut
So, where would YOU start?
I, personally, wouldn't need to start anywhere. We do have a system that does have checks and balances. But as long as you brought these examples up, lets take a closer look at them.
...how about Mets pitcher Tom Glavine. Surely his $35million for 3 years of work is outrageous!
...If Tom Glavine wasn't worth nearly $12million/year to the Mets in ticket sales, TV revenues, etc., they wouldn't have paid for it.
My question is this,
Is he a New Yorker? Is that his chosen home? Or is that just where he works?
I'm from San Diego, so I have a somewhat distorted view of baseball. You see we had this player named Tony Gwynn (maybe you've heard of him, he was the best player the game has ever seen), and he
is a San Diegian. How do I quantify that? He started playing baseball while at SDSU (even though he was there to play basketball), was drafted into the Padre organization (and the San Diego Clippers) right out of college. He played for 20 seasons with the Padres. In those 20 seasons he earned under $50 million with the Padres.
Surely he could have asked for more. Surely any team in baseball would have paid more for him than the Padres could afford. Why stay? He is a San Diegian.
Now that he is out of major league baseball, where has he gone? He is the head coach at SDSU. And that was after a season of being a volunteer assistant coach under his original coach at SDSU before he retired.
I don't know what the Mets are hoping to get for their $35 million over 3 years, but they aren't going to get someone who is really part of the team. Yes it is a waste of money. No, Glavine isn't worth it. Yes, the game is hurt by this type of price gouging.
Second example? The Minnesota Twins. Last season the Twins showed that a team with heart at the bottom of the salary scale could hold their own with the best that money could buy.
I've been in sports most of my life as both athlete (high school, college and open) and coach (college and open), and now doing work for a sports magazine, and the one thing I can tell you is that greed can never replace sportsmanship or team work.
How about the cast of NBC TV show Friends? Surely they can't be worth $1million each per episode? That's ridiculous!
Please. As much as my head spins by all of the above examples, they were able to obtain it under fair market value. If NBC wasn't making a gaggle of cash from Friends, they wouldn't have even considered the $6million+ cost of each episode.
But at this point are their hearts really in the show? I haven't watched any of the episodes after the early seasons, so I really don't know. But assuming it is the biggest thing on TV these days is it worth it?
Was Cheers worth that much in the 80's? If so, why were they not paid like that? If not what makes Friends so much better today than Cheers some 15 years ago?
Actually that could be applied to all actors, directors, music artists and the like. Why should they be making so much more than those that came before them relative to the state of the economy at those times?
More important, where is the money really coming from? In the case of NBC, are they paying this to keep the advertisers? I wouldn't think so. Are they doing it for the audience? Most likely. Thursday nights have been
the night for NBC going back to the Cosby Show. It is more likely that this extension of the series is actually to buy (literally) time until a suitable show can take it's place. Is that amount of money worth keeping viewers to the Thursday night habit? Actually I would have to say both Yes and No for that one. They have now opened themselves and others (like HBO) to being asked incredible salaries from lead actors who thing they can blackmail studios and networks for more money.
...what about Steve Jobs. A $140 million Jet, plus over $100milliion in stock options is over the top, right?
...And if Steve Jobs service to Apple didn't warrrant his compensation, he wouldn't get it.
That is easy. No. This actually is very much along the lines of what is happening with actors. Corporate officers all know what everyone else is getting. Most boards want their officers to stay and most officers want to be in at least the upper half of the salary range. Lets look at a hypothetical example for a moment:
Company A wants to keep their executives in the top 50% of salaries. So they look and see what those salaries are and adjust their salaries to keep their people in that range.
Now, all companies like Company A are part of a group called Company A', the salary range is determined by the salaries of this group. When ever a member of this group realizes that they are part of the bottom 50% they increase their salaries to be part of the top 50%.
The actions of the group generate a raisein overall salaries that has nothing to do with the actual performance of the executives. They worth is not the point of the increase, not being perceived as being part of the bottom 50% of salaries for executives is the driving force, and no matter what any of them do, 50% are always going to be at the bottom.
This has nothing to do with the worth of company officers. This needs regulation. Why? Because unlike in other areas were consumers can create a backlash to stop that type of inflation, they are removed from this situation.
When other measures have been tried, we have ended up with situations like ENRON where the officers created profits for themselves where there wasn't any. Or worse, manipulated markets to provide optimum profits at the expense of everyone else (ENRON again and how it controlled energy prices and flow to California).
Sadly, regulation already existed to stop those types of abuses. But when companies have the ear of the President and Vice President and can even set things like the nations energy policy, regulation becomes ineffective.
If there is something that is more horrifying than the fact that we have been brought to war, it is the fact that the government has stopped regulating friends of the White House.
My prediction (which is more likely to happen then serpicolugnut's was): Our economy is going to continue to sink until Bush is out of power and a pre-Bush economic style plane is put forward (think Bush I/Clinton).
