Considering their decisions often have rough ramifications for so many people, says Thom Hartmann:
So why is executive pay so high?
I’ve examined this with both my psychotherapist hat on and my amateur economist hat on, and only one rational answer presents itself: CEOs in America make as much money as they do because there really is a shortage of people with their skill set. And it’s such a serious shortage that some companies have to pay as much as $1 million a day to have somebody successfully do the job.
But what part of being a CEO could be so difficult-so impossible for mere mortals-that it would mean that there are only a few hundred individuals in the United States capable of performing it?
In my humble opinion, it’s the sociopath part.
CEOs of community-based businesses are typically responsive to their communities and decent people. But the CEOs of most of the world’s largest corporations daily make decisions that destroy the lives of many other human beings.
Only about 1 to 3 percent of us are sociopaths-people who don’t have normal human feelings and can easily go to sleep at night after having done horrific things. And of that 1 percent of sociopaths, there’s probably only a fraction of a percent with a college education. And of that tiny fraction, there’s an even tinier fraction that understands how business works, particularly within any specific industry.
Thus there is such a shortage of people who can run modern monopolistic, destructive corporations that stockholders have to pay millions to get them to work. And being sociopaths, they gladly take the money without any thought to its social consequences.
Too harsh? Not harsh enough?
Maybe both. I read the transcript of Bill Moyers’ interview with Wendell Potter, formerly head of corporate communications for Cigna. He was shocked…Shocked!…to see people traveling hundreds of miles for free health care. He had no idea there were people in America that desperate for health care. He had no idea that high premiums, refusing to cover “pre-existing conditions,” dropping people or companies who make too many claims, refusing to cover “experimental” procedures like kidney transplants, etc., etc., etc., would actually affect the real lives of real people. No, he’s no psychopath. He’s just a poor ordinary schlub who got out of the insurance biz while the gettin’ was still good.
Man. I know I’ve made some stupid decisions in my life, but one I’m proud of was a vow I made to myself never to have more money than I have sense or morals. Thus far, my sense far outweighs my bank account. I leave it to God to judge my morals.