Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Limit executive pay?

Absolutely!

Any company (or successor or subsidiary) that gets any sort of bailout from the government should go on a special list. A tax law should be written that says that gross income in excess of the salary of the President of the US of anyone who works for any company on that list is taxable at a rate of 100%.

Do you think these companies will suffer? That they won't be able to hire competent executives? I doubt it. They certainly couldn't do worse than they've done with the current crop of high priced executives! But I'll go even further. If such a law were in place, I'll bet that a comparison after five year of companies on that list to matched companies not on the there will show no statistically significant difference with respect to company performance.

This is an experiment I want the country to try.

No comments: