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Athletic Salaries

There is a little bit of a buzz trying to be generated in the sporting news by pronouncing that Alex Rodriguez's annual salary is more than the total combined salaries of all the Florida Marlins players.

That is good and all, but these guys are entertainers and are paid what the market can bear.  What irks me are the CEOs of large companies who individually pull down more than Alex Rodriguez.  The same CEOs who may have axed a few hundred employees, whose combined salaries are about equivalent to what the CEO made.

What makes a person worth that much each year?  I don't know - I really don't know.  More importantly, what makes a person worth that much more than the average workers in the firm are paid?  We are talking multiples of a hundred here - and it is hard to argue that someone is worth a hundred times more than the next guy.

April 1st, 2008 / 5 Comments / Trackback

Comments on “Athletic Salaries”

  1. Jimmy Cayne would say that he too was paid what the market could, ahem, bear.

    Andre on April 1st, 2008 at 4:04 pm

  2. Well, if $X is the salary of a typical worker, and a CEO figures out how to maintain current profitability without having to pay 100 of those workers, then isn't the value the CEO adds to the company something close to $100X by definition? (It doesn't seem right to me either, but I'm playing devils advocate here...)

    Brian on April 2nd, 2008 at 5:47 am

  3. Yup, Jimmy Cayne and some others got the short end of the stick, but it was still a $68 million stick on top of whatever he was pulling down in salary. As for CEOs that can right a listing ship, I still think compensation at this level should be tied to performance rather than what the board of directors feels is appropriate. Of course, these two things should be related.

    Arthur Lo on April 2nd, 2008 at 9:05 am

  4. Jimmy Cayne didn't get the short end of the stick. He made out like a fucking bandit. Taxpayers (that's YOU and ME) got the short end of the stick.

    Andre on April 2nd, 2008 at 10:02 am

  5. Jimmy Cayne could have ended up with a billion dollars. Settling for $68 million must have hurt. Yes, us taxpayers will be the ones footing the bill for this fiscal mess, while the former CEOs of the companies that got us here keep living it up.

    Arthur Lo on April 2nd, 2008 at 4:24 pm






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