Land_Surfer - 5/5/2016 21:56

What so many people don't understand is that with executive management (executive VP's up through pres. and CEO) comes performance based compensation based on a percent of: growth, profit, savings, employee (could be students) retention, you name it, and when these companies earn billions of dollars and have 10's of thousands of employees the percentages these folks earn can be staggering to the average joe, but a drop in the bucket to their company as a whole. Competition is in the drivers seat. Company A, B, C could elect to cap their exec. compensation at a modest level, but you won't keep them long when the rest of the industry doesn't, and there is absolutely nothing any one of us can do about it. Not even a new president, congress, etc. can change it. Lowering their salaries to a modest level won't change a thing. It won't protect jobs, it most likely won't make a dent in profitability, it certainly won't make the products they produce cheaper, as long as their are publicly traded companies and stock holders. Deere, CAT, Ford, GM products will never get cheaper if their CEO's go from $15 mil/year to $500,000/year. Executive management compensation is a fundamental of all companies and is budgeted into place right along with everything else in the company.