Oxford is nice. Its full of posh people, rich foreigners and tourists. Because it is a University town and its got a lot of money it means it is nice, crime free and has great restaurants and night life. Its also historic and a 30 min blast from London.

I lived there back in 2001, and would really like to move back there... If you can afford to live in Jericho.. do.

I like Oxford because it is busy if you want it... but sleepy if you like that too..

but I am not a big city person...hence why I live in Warwick.....I like Warwick... coz its relaxed.... but has some great restaurants and pubs and is relatively close to the major cities and airports. (and my job!)

It depends what your after... what are you after? :D

Well, the US dollar is kind of imaginary in a sense. It is no longer backed by anything, and the Federal Reserve is loaned money from private banks....

What we are doing is creating a gap, a very large gap between the upper and lower classes, by basically destroying the middle class. About 1/3 of my paycheck goes to taxes every month, and I hate it.

Everything in our Government is for self interest. So, obviously the rich are going to get richer while the middle class gets wiped out and you create a larger gap between the two.

I just read that right now there are more millionaire's per capita in the US than ever before in the history of the US. The gap is already starting to get bigger and bigger.

As long as the super rich can keep people thinking about taxes and not equitable pay, the situation will get worse.

Lower taxes and you lower them most for the richest among us, while increasing the national debt. It happened in the 80s, and it has happened over the last 7 years. Tax and Spend is far cheaper than Borrow and Spend, partly because of the interest, but also because when Congress starts borrowing it doesn't know when to stop.

Meanwhile, according to Forbes, the average CEO of a top 500 company raked in $10.2 million in 2005. If you work for one of those companies and you make $200,000 per year (considerably more than the average worker) then those CEOs made on average about 51 times what you make. You can be sure they'd much rather have you thinking about saving a lousy few thousand dollars in taxes than getting a pay raise to bring you closer to their pay, say to a reasonable 10% of what they make.

I was kind of referring to what counts as taxable income. If you get paid in stock, or you make most your money from funds, you get taxed less. Like for example if your company instead of giving you a paycheck gives you a mutual fund or a bond or something else, you still pay taxes on it and it is still considered income, but you don't pay any medicaid taxes, you don't pay any social security taxes either on it. Where as the people who only have paychecks get taxed to the fullest.

The problem lies with in the system IMO. Even though I would like to get paid more, I am sure I make more than a lot of people my age, so I don't really complain about it. I just wished some of the taxes did not allow the rich to making tons of money and paying less taxes for it.

A company may pay a CEO 200,000 in pay check form each year, but they also get stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc which count as investments and aren't taxed like normal income. Which makes them hit that several million mark but they are only getting fully taxed on $200k.

I think that's a red herring.

Obviously there are numerous exceptions due to shady/incompetent Boards of Directors, but, for the most part, the value of the the CEO making 10 Meg to any company is worth more than the value of 100 lower level employees each making 100K.

Equitable pay, in my opinion, means paying people commensurate with their value to the profitability of a corporation, not paying them all roughly equally.

I really like big cities...or at least being within a close distance of them (like, less than an hours drive).

My wife, of course, would like a big town because she's a dance teacher, and the bigger the town (or, perhaps, just the more wealth you have in one area), the better chance you have of getting a bunch of students.

As for me, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life just yet. I have a history degree with a minor in CS. I think I'd be a good salesman, but I worry that I won't know enough about British culture to just walk into a British corporation and sell things...though I suppose one never knows.

In reality, we just want to take two years outside of America after we graduate to gain a sense of perspective. England is a front runner along with Japan (we both speak a nominal amount of Japanese.) So...I need to find a place where I can get a job to pay off school loans, whilst I also want to be in a place that I can receive a more diverse cultural experience.

Kind of complex, but if you have an answer for that one... ;).

Paying with stocks & bonds is just an accounting trick to lower the tax rate for both the company and the CEO. It actually makes their pay even higher, as if it isn't far too high already.

I agree with your opinion of the definition of equitable pay, but there is no way that the average CEO is worth 100 times the value of the average $100K/year employee. There are very few CEOs that could possibly be worth that much more. You need to think about what that number means. It means that if a highly skilled, well educated worker who makes $100K per year were to make that amount every year for 100 YEARS, they would accumulate the same pay as the CEO made in 1 year! That's absurd.

Or looked at a different way, it means that there is a 1% probability that any one of those highly skilled, well educated workers could perform the job of the CEO as well as the CEO performs.

Given our obviously different life experiences and viewpoints, we will just have to agree that the other's opinion in this case is absurd.

I am curious, though - if you were to find yourself in a position in which you could effect some changes, how would you propose to change this alleged "unfair" compensation differential, and what sort of objective criteria would you use to define "fairness"?

The cultural differences are greater than some would have you believe. You need to be aware of British humour. It is heavy on sarcasm and irony and many Americans take offence when confronted with it the first few times. Interestingly, we only use it with friends that we consider reasonably close.

You will have good fun with the spellng - all those unnecessary letters that the Dutch taught us to use all those years ago...;) Generally speaking, the Brits do not like being sold to. odd, because they need to be sold to more than most!

The weather: The reticent Brits can only start a conversation with a stranger by commenting on the weather. Bog-standard opener, that one.

I would recommend reading this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Watching-Engli.../dp/0340818867

I read it and cringed at it's accuracy. We really are a bizarre bunch.;)

While CEO pay is outrageously high, it isn't calculated by value to the company. It's calculated by the market for CEOs. You can start and become the CEO of your own company and vow that your salary will never be more than 10x the average employee. That's fine, and it will work. But the second you decide to move on or step down, the company needs to find a new CEO. Now you have to find a CEO who's willing to leave their typical CEO salary job for yours, taking a dramatic drop in pay. Or, to attract the CEO you need and make an offer comparable to the competition, well, you have to pay market rate.

That's not saying it's right. Pro athlete salaries operate the same way and they are out of control. The problem is that it's going to be hard to find a soul who believes that they are doing right by their family by taking a salary so much lower than the rest of the industry. To lower CEO or athlete salaries, the majority of CEOs and athletes are going to have to say "this is ridiculous, we all need to make a lot less." And who's going to go first, second, and third on that one? You might find a first, but after that...good luck

I agree with your point about market forces, but I see other complicating issues. I believe that the reason you state is one of the main reasons CEO salaries seem to be totally out of hand. Another is the incestuous relationship with corporate management and the Board of Directors. Another is just general incompetence on the part of many Boards.

The fact remains that, in principle, even in the example you cite about athletes, the pay is a function of what they bring to the table. Pro teams pay the exorbitant salaries to certain athletes because the return on the investment (in increased ticket/concession sales, TV revenue, etc., etc.) is greater than what the athlete is paid. The same applies to many top CEOs, as well - they bring more value to the company than the amount of their compensation. One example we're familiar with here is Jobs. He took over a stumbling, going-nowhere Apple from the likes of Scully and Amelio, and turned it into what it is today. Granted, he doesn't make a salary per se, but the millions in stock options that he gets are a small fraction of what his return has meant to the value of the company.

Actually, the situation is better with athletes than for many corporations. Note that it is only the high performing/popular athletes (who will increase the income to the team owner) who get the big bucks, not all of them. While (in my opinion, at least) a large fraction of CEOs are worth the high compensation packages, it appears that many boards do not seem to concern themselves with the "pay for performance" issue, but go with the flow - i.e., if a CEO at a comparable company X gets paid a certain amount, they will offer the same or better package to hire their own CEO, without due consideration of actual worth or performance. Therefore, the trend becomes that any CEO of a particular size corporation gets paid comparably to all the others, rather than just the ones who really are worth that much - which seems to be exactly the point you were making. Hell, if someone were to offer me a small fortune to take a job I might not be qualified for, I'd be the last one to complain.

Another issue is that it is Boards who offer the compensation packages to CEOs and it is CEOs who directly influence the remuneration that Board members get. This tends to result in spiraling compensation packages, also. If that's not incestuous, I don't know what is. In my view, it should be considered as criminal conflict of interest, but it's not.

I believe the crux of the problem is that only very rarely is a compensation package defined in terms of truly meaningful and objectively measurable criteria. Very often the bonuses are given for profits over one or more quarters or a number of years. What is neglected, is that if a CEO churns out short term profits for a time while he is driving the the substance of the company into the ground, that will rarely result in anything worse than his bailing with a golden parachute when the company finally goes under. And the Boards get paid, no matter what.

I would set some rules/tax incentives or penalties that would ensure that the ratio of CEO pay to the average employee's in a company would drop back to what it was when America was at its peak.

Now I have a question for you. Given the undeniable fact that CEO pay has been rising significantly faster than employee pay for a long time, do you believe that today's CEOs are significantly better than those of 20, 30, 40, and 50 years ago? If so, what makes them better? Is it their greater willingness to use layoffs to increase short term profits, despite the long term implications it has on their companies and the economy?

Re: Unstable currencies like the US Dollar...
 

I don’t see why that should be any problem. And I understand your sentiments.

Recently it made international headlines when top model Gisele Bundchen made it clear that she would no longer accept payment in an unstable currency like the US Dollar. For some strange reason that made waves!

Personally, I recently lost a fair bit of money after delivering 10 articles for publication in a new US magazine. By the time the editors paid me, the dollar had taken a nosedive.

I just checked... I can still buy an 18 can fridge pack of high calorie, low taste beer for $9.18 at the local market. The sky has not yet fallen.

One's salary is set by the market. Why would an employer pay more when there are 20 other candidates for the job who are just as qualified and are willing to do the job for that same wage? Increasingly, the competition for that job may not all be in the U.S.

In the U.S., the rich are indeed getting richer and the poor are indeed getting poorer. There are many examples of how and why this is happening (the housing market downturn for example). At this point, it becomes a political debate; one we can view regularly on TV as the election nears. And, I hope I don't cross the line when I say, "I ain't rich!'

I think you're giving the captain of the ship far too much credit for setting the course. While deciding where to go and when is important, there are many other jobs that have as much or more influence on the condition of the ship at the end of the journey, yet the pay is significantly less.

Just look at the oil industry, where Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray R Irani was paid 64.1 million dollars in 2005. Meanwhile, companies like his have highly educated and very well trained scientists scouring the globe for new sources of oil. The decisions these people make every day are much more critical to the company and to consumers than any decision the CEO will make because they determine whether or not oil will be found! Without them, the company would cease to exist. Are they paid the same as Ray? No. Half? No. Twenty five percent? Certainly not. What are they paid? I don't know, but if they're paid a half million a year, that would be an enormous sum for them, but it would only be 0.78% of what Ray raked in. Once again, it would take more than a hundred years for people who are better educated, better trained, and more critical to the success of the company to earn what the CEO was paid in one year — and that assumes they're paid $500,000 per year, which is likely more than double what they actually make!

When business management becomes cybernetic
 

Definitely not.
Sure, in the short-term all the layoffs and the exporting of jobs to India, China, Mexico or wherever may stuff lots of extra profits into the pockets of shareholders.

This may, however, prove to be as though they’re urinating in their trousers to keep warm, to quote a Swedish politician.

In the long run I am convinced that many companies are eroding their future customer base in a potentially catastrophic way.

Furthermore, although I don’t have documentation to back it up, I believe that more CEOs of the past made moral choices. If a CEO puts morality above profits today, he or she is likely to be out of a job. Fast.

So what we end up with is essentially a cybernetic process, where the human and moral aspects of top management decisions are taken out of the loop.

That’s more than a disgrace, more than a tragedy; it may well prove to be our undoing.

Respectfully,
ArcticStones
.

.
A wise man once said:

"Money is a lot like manure.
If you spread it around on your crops, it does a lot of good.
But if you pile it all up in one place, it smells like s***."
.

Interesting perspective on US dollar & petroleum
 

This isn't the exact link for which I'd been looking. A couple years back I came across this point of view. In googling a moment ago, this came up, and it will suffice.

It suggests an interesting explanation for recent world events.

http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html

Another interesting point of view regarding a direction we may be headed.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199203/barber
He lost me a bit when he included the Macintosh in his list because the name fit in with his alliteration. Macintosh is to McDonalds what the PC is to BMW. Other than that, it is an interesting article.