This'll make your blood boil.
Twenty-five of the 100 highest-paid CEOs took home more money than their companies paid to the U.S. government in taxes.
You just have to wonder: How many private jets and French chateaus do these people need, anyway?
The Institute for Policy Studies put out a study today showing just how wildly out of control two things have gotten: 1. CEO pay. 2. Corporate tax dodging.
Reports IPS,
We researched the 100 U.S. corporations that shelled out the most last year in CEO compensation. At 25 of these corporate giants, we found, the bill for chief executive compensation actually ran higher than the company's entire federal corporate income tax bill.
...This contrast shows up starkly in the 2010 ratio between average worker and average CEO compensation. In 2009, we calculate, major corporate CEOs took home 263 times the pay of America's average workers. Last year, this gap leaped to 325-to-1.
Among the nation's top firms, the S&P 500, CEO pay last year averaged $10,762,304, up 27.8 percent over 2009. Average worker pay in 2010? That finished up at $33,121, up just 3.3 percent over the year before.Here are 10 of the miscreants:
John Faraci at International Paper: $12.3 million
John Strangfeld at Prudential: $16.2 million
Jeff Immelt at GE: $15.2 million
Ivan Seidenberg at Verizon: $18.1 million (and we love this little detail: every Verizon phone customer paid more in federal telephone excise taxes than Verizon paid in federal income taxes)
Robert Kelly at Bank of New York Mellon: $19.4 million
Jim McNerney at Boeing: $13.8 million
Brian Duperreault at Marsh & McLennan: $14 million
John Lundgren at Stanley Black & Decker: $32.6 million (AND he's laying off 4,000 workers)
Aubrey McLendon at Chesapeake Energy: $21 million
John Donahoe at eBay: $12.4 millionRead the whole thing here.
Here's what you can do about it: Sign IPS's petition to Congress to pass the Stop Tax Havens Abuse Act.
