Viacom's Philippe Dauman made $84.5 million last year.
(Photo: Flickr user
Joi)
Read it and weep. Or vomit. Your choice.
The New York Times has taken a look at corporate executive pay for 2010:
The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009.
We know corporate profits aren't translating into jobs or pay raises for the average worker, but shareholder profit is king, right? Maybe not:
The median pay raise for chief executives last year — 23 percent — was roughly in line with the increase in net corporate profits. But it far exceeded the median gain in shareholders’ total return, which was 16 percent, as well as the median gain in revenue, which was 7 percent.
This is inequality in action. Companies give huge raises to executives while not hiring workers, and not giving raises to regular people because they're lucky to have jobs at all, amIright?