Some unlucky duckies might be unemployed, but there are others who are prospering.
... [Disney chief Robert] Iger's salary and bonus reached nearly $16.3 million, up from $12 million a year earlier. His total compensation, including equity awards, reached $28 million ... Disney's head of strategic planning, Kevin A. Mayer, collected a 42.5% hike in his salary and bonus to $2.3 million. Including equity awards, his compensation reached $4.1 million ...
It's always good to see folks making the best of their situation. Diz Co.'s net income is up 20%, while income is up 5%.
Sadly, the stock fell 61 cents today. Can't have everything.
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28 comments:
Cue the class-envy debate.
Starting in..
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Compared to the guys running Viacom, Iger is getting chump change.
And is it really always class-envy to point out obscene greed? Someone tell me again how much Walt Disney took for his salary back in the day.
This isn't about class envy...it's about Corporate Communism gone amok.
What's this stuff about "class"? What, did Iger become head of Disney by right of birth?
God, when is Disney going to be headed up by someone with vision and at least a little bit of artistic instinct, instead of all these acquisition-hungry corporate chumps?
Compared to the Viacom honchos, Iger's paying himself like a chump. I feel bad that he's only taking home $28 million, while Dauman (Viacom CEO) took home $84.5 million, and Tom Dooley (second in command at Viacom) took home $65 million. How can Bob Iger face these guys at the country club?
By the way, someone remind me how much Walt Disney used to pay himself.
It's not a matter of envying anything. After all, when we die, we all die broke.
But it's always good to know How Things Work. Here's an example unrelated to the House of Mouse.
Goldman Sachs Gives Blankfein a Big Raise
Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs ... got a raise: his bonus increased by $3.6 million, according to a regulatory filing.
The firm’s board granted restricted stock valued at $12.6 million to Mr. Blankfein and other senior executives ...
Goldman's ... stock performance was relatively flat, and it reported earnings of $8.35 billion, down 37 percent from 2009.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/41326458
So, to summarize: The company you run sees a big decline in earnings, and you get a raise.
For many large companies, the idea that a top exec's salary and bonus(es) are tied to corporate performance is laughable. They get their fat paychecks whether the company peforms or not. That's the way Things (Mostly) Work. And I think it's useful to keep that reality in your head.
..and now the gNOp and teabaggers want to "privatize" Social Security and Medicare. Between that and the tax giveaways to the Corporate Communists to ship more U.S. jobs overseas, we could be in for another round of "reagunomics," and we all know how that miserably failed.
To be fair, the GOP currently is a defender of Medicare and (to a somewhat lesser degree) Social Security. The party won a majority of the seasoned citizen vote in '10, vowing to protect Medicare.
I don't think the GOP House Majority has proposals to touch Social Security or Medicare at the present time. Electoral realities loom large.
They vowed to "protect" both by privatizing them into the stock market, with little to no regulations Umagine had this been in play when the bush economic debacle came about.
The gNOp and the teabaggers are hell bent on limiting individual choice and responsibility, and legislating morality. And re-instituting "death panels"
Comments like the ones here going way off topic about tea party types are a good reason for dropping the Anonymous ID. Very few blogs allow anonymous comments. It would make a much more civil dialog.
But then, maybe Steve is concerned that without the cloak of invisibility no one would comment at all?
The Bush hater is back again. Dude, face it: Obama is a failure. The current Dem party is a failure. The Tea Party gave them both - in Obama's words - a "shellacking" last November, so apparently your form of the blame game is being played by a scant few. Deal with it. Now go watch some cartoons.
Men, the comments on the TAG blog is an authentic soap opera.
In any case, Bob Iger is a well dressed executive. Boy, those suits look snazzy.
He should get another raise simply for looking good.
...and expensive, too...
michelle bachmann....face of the teabaggers...enough said.
^Enough said? Likely not. Soon you'll be back to wrench the comments section completely off-topic with your paranoid political rants. Loser.
I'm confused why everyone sees the idea of privatizing Social Security as a bad thing. Maybe it's because I'm young, but I'd much rather keep the money I'm being forced to pay into Social Security and put it in my own savings account under my control.
I'm honestly curious. Can someone explain why Social Security is such a good thing?
I'm honestly curious. Can someone explain why Social Security is such a good thing?
It was put in place to help insure that seasoned citizens don't starve in their old age. IT was never intended to be -- and isn't -- an investment account like a 401(k).
From the National Bureau of Economic Research:
... Between 1960 and 1995, the official poverty rate of those aged 65 and above fell from 35 percent to 10 percent, and research has documented similarly steep declines dating back to at least 1939. While poverty was once far more prevalent among the elderly than among other age groups, today's elderly have a poverty rate similar to that of working-age adults and much lower than that of children.
Social Security is often mentioned as a likely contributor to the decline in elderly poverty. Enacted in 1935, the Social Security system experienced rapid benefit growth in the post-WWII era. In fact, there is a striking association between the rise in Social Security expenditures per capita and the decline in elderly poverty, as Figure 1 illustrates ....
http://www.nber.org/aginghealth/summer04/w10466.html
If people were able to "opt out" of the system and invest the SS taxes on their own, some people would be winners and some losers. But if the system were privatized, and everything went down fifty or eighty percent at the time recipients were about to retire, there would be large problems.
Long and short: You should save for retirement. Social Security is but one leg of the stool. It's not designed as investment-retirement account, and never was. It doesn't have a funding problem. (Medicare has the long-term difficulties.)
Since you admit to being young let me explain how the world is not and never will be a best case scenario. If SS was allowed to be 'privatized' some people (possibly like yourself) would be diligent and actually take good control of that money and might end up ahead then if it had stayed in SS. BUT what would happen to the majority of those that had the money given into their safekeeping would either not get around to investing it and even if they did they would make a mess of it (whether through their fault or not).
That would leave a huge amount of the population that had NO security whatsoever - even as little as SS offers.
Now if you're of 'one' mindset you might say "tough shit" that's their problem why should I care? Because if there's a large amount of the population that have no income whatsoever it will impact everyone - especially those that did invest their money wisely.
That's why the smart people are of the 'other' mindset and think it's inportant to help everyone. Call it Socialism if you want, but it is absolutely necessary and if your investments should crash within the next 40 years as many have you will appreciate this.
One of my best friends -- a life-long Republican who worked on Nixon's campaign -- said to me:
"You know what will happen if retirees get screwed on privatized social security accounts? Like they get wiped out in retirement or just before?
"They'll be all over the Feds to save them and solve the problem, and vote for anybody who will do what they want."
Yeah, ok.
So, back to Igers bonus and no artists getting bonuses. DW gets bonuses.
Well, if privatization was to occur, I don't think anyone would be for yanking benefits away. It would be a gradual process so that people who depend on SS wouldn't be hurt by it.
Thanks for the explanations, Steve and Anonymous. I still think I'd rather have my money, though I see your point about the ramifications for others. However I also think the current situation encourages dependence and lack of discipline. But hey, we could debate this all day.
As for Iger, his salary is a bit ridiculous, even though Disney had a good year. Really all of these things are far too top-loaded. Why not trickle that down to everyone?
And someone above had a good question: how much did Walt make? Anyone have an idea?
Very similar conversation recently over on Cartoonbrew:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/the-obscene-pay-of-viacom-execs.html
I just finished listening to the Mark Kausler interview. Fascinating, but heartbreaking the degree to which the animation industry is built on slave wages and unpaid overtime. Especially when compared to executive compensation.
Behind a great fortune, there's a great crime....
'Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie's corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive.'
That's JP Morgan.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnbaron11.html
rufus
jesus fucking christ! when did the tag blog turn into political debate 101!
my understanding was political POV's were a no no on this blog STEVE, however you're just contiuing the trend and derailing your own blog post.
congratulations on yet again bringing the TAG blog down even further among the blogosphere. Before not, people will give up and move on.
Your bread and butter, the anonymous posts are just ruining this blog and the ability to keep comments and discussions peaceful. You NEED to start moderating the posts better. I'm done with it.
oh and in case anyone cares considering how large a company disney is, Bob Igers pay is significantly lower then other CEOs of other companies of equal value.
Anyways, I'm done with this blog. It's nothing but trash these days. Maybe I'll check back in a month or two to see if anythings improved.
my understanding was political POV's were a no no on this blog STEVE, however you're just contiuing the trend and derailing your own blog post.
When they get far afield from the post, we remove them.
Executive Pay is what the post was about. So ... talking about Viacom or J.P. Morgan's pay (I discussed Goldman Sachs, after all) isn't that far afield.
But hey. Feel free to move on if it gets to hot and political for you. Wouldn't want to sear your eyeballs.
J needs a chill pill....
Whenever you hear mention of an exorbitant executive salaries, inevitable someone else says, "Well CEO A doesn't make nearly as much as CEO B." And in both cases, a reasoned person would ask, "How much is enough ?"
And it reminds me of a poem by Kurt Vonnegut, titled "Enough."
That poem inspired the title of Jack Bogle's book of the same name.
Rather than excerpt the poem, you can read it at Bob Sutton's blog.
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/kurt_vonnegut_a.html
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