首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
In 1965, America’s big companies had a hell of a year. The stock market was booming. Sales were rising briskly, profit margins w
In 1965, America’s big companies had a hell of a year. The stock market was booming. Sales were rising briskly, profit margins w
admin
2015-01-10
91
问题
In 1965, America’s big companies had a hell of a year. The stock market was booming. Sales were rising briskly, profit margins were fat, and corporate profits as a percentage of GDP were at an all-time high. Almost half a century later, some things look much the same: big American companies have had a hell of a year, with the stock market soaring, margins strong, and profits hitting a new all-time high. But there’s one very noticeable difference. In 1965, CEOs at big companies earned on average about 20 times as much as their typical employee. These days, CEOs earn about 270 times as much.
That huge gap between the top and the middle is the result of a boom in executive compensation, which rose 876 per cent between 1978 and 2011. In response, we’ve had a host of regulatory reforms designed to curb executive pay. The latest of these is a rule, unveiled by the SEC last month, requiring companies to disclose the ratio of the CEO’s pay to that of the median worker. The idea is that, once the disparity is made public, companies will be less likely to award outsized pay packages.
Faith in disclosure has been crucial to the regulation of executive pay since the 1930s. More recently, rules have made companies detail the size and the structure of compensation packages and have enforced transparency about the kinds of comparisons they rely on to determine salaries. The result is that shareholders today know far more about CEO compensation than ever before. There’s only one problem: even as companies are disclosing more and more, executive pay keeps going up and up.
This isn’ t a coincidence: the drive for transparency has actually helped fuel the spiralling salaries. For one thing, it gives executives a good idea of how much they can get away with asking for. A more crucial reason, though, has to do with the way boards of directors set salaries. As Charles Elson and Craig Ferrere write, boards at most companies use what’ s called " peer benchmarking. " They look at the CEO salaries at peer-group firms, and then peg their CEO’s pay to the 50th, 75th, or 90th percentile of the peer group—never lower. This leads to the so-called Lake Wobegon effect: every CEO gets treated as above average. "Relying on peer-group comparisons, the way boards do, mathematically guarantees that pay is going to go up," Elson told me.
On top of this, peer-group comparisons aren’ t always honest: boards can be too cozy with CEOs and may tweak the comparisons to justify overpaying. A recent study shows that boards tend to include as peers companies that are bigger than they are and that pay CEOs more. The system is skewed by so-called "leapfroggers," the few CEOs in a given year who, whether by innate brilliance or by dumb luck, end up earning astronomical salaries. Those big paydays reset the baseline expectations for everyone else.
This isn’t just an American problem. Nor is it primarily a case of boards being helplessly in thrall to a company’ s executives. Boards are far more independent of management than they used to be, and it’s notable that a CEO hired from outside a company—typically gets 20 to 25 per cent more than an inside candidate. The real issues are subtler, though no less insidious. Some boards remain convinced of what Elson calls "superstar theory": they think that CEOs can work their magic anywhere, and must be overpaid to stay. In addition, Elson said, "if you pay below average, it makes it look as if you’d hired a below-average CEO, and what board wants that?"
Transparent pricing has perverse effects in other fields. In a host of recent cases, public disclosure of the prices that hospitals charge for various procedures has ended up driving prices up rather than down. And the psychological causes in both situations seem similar. We tend to be uneasy about bargaining in situations where the stakes are very high: do you want the guy doing your neurosurgery, or running your company, to be offering discounts? Better, in the event that something goes wrong, to be able to tell yourself that you spent all you could. And overspending is always easier when you’ re spending someone else’ s money. Corporate board members are disbursing shareholder funds; most patients have insurance to foot the bill.
Sunlight is supposed to be the best disinfectant. But there’ s something naive about the new SEC rule, which presumes that full disclosure will embarrass companies enough to restrain executive pay. As Elson told me, "People who can ask to be paid a hundred million dollars are beyond embarrassment. " More important, as long as the system for setting pay is broken, more disclosure makes things worse instead of better. We don’t need more information. We need boards of directors to step up and set pay themselves, instead of outsourcing the job to their peers. The rest of us don’ t get to live in Lake Wobegon. CEOs shouldn’t, either.
The author makes a comparison between today’s America with that of 1965______.
选项
A、to show the connection between the growth of stock market and profit margins
B、to demonstrate the development of American companies
C、to expose the increasing profit margins of businesses
D、to display the widening gap in income between the CEOs and average employees
答案
D
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/rxSO777K
本试题收录于:
NAETI高级口译笔试题库外语翻译证书(NAETI)分类
0
NAETI高级口译笔试
外语翻译证书(NAETI)
相关试题推荐
HenryDavidThoreau—WhyIWenttotheWoodsLetusspendonedayasdeliberatelyasNature,andnotbethrownoffthetrack
Manypsychologistsatthattimesawtheimportanceoftailoringeducationalmaterialtofitthelearner’struecondition,notth
Atthreethousandfeet,wideplainsbegintoappear,andthereisneveramomentwhensomedistantmountainisnot________.
Doctorswarnedsun-starvedtouristswhoreceivedtoomuchsunlightthattheywereatseriousriskthanothersofcontractingski
Thewomanwoulddieifthechilddied.Thewomanwouldbeliedownwithabrokenheart.
KarlMarx’ssocialhistoricalresearchdeeplyrevealsthe________relationsbetweenthesocialdevelopmentandhuman’sfulldevel
随着中国实现总量控制的目标所面临的挑战日益严峻,以部门为基础分配减排责任的可能性越来越大。另外,根据最新修订的《空气清洁条例》,排放许可最终被赋予了法律地位,并在指定和执行减排义务中起指导性作用。//根据这两项最新的政策进展,美国环保协会已经和国家环保总局
Listentothefollowingpassage.WriteashortEnglishsummaryofaround150-200wordsofwhatyouhaveheard.Youwillhearthe
JohnCiardigothismaster’sdegreefromtheUniversityofMichiganin1939andhaspublishedmorethan40poems.
A、MakingawillwiththehusbandB、Registeringyourhome.C、Gettinglegaladvicefromalawyer.D、Donatingtheproperty.D
随机试题
设0<P(A)<1,0<P(B)<1,P(A|B)+P()=1,则:
根据《环境影响评价技术导则生态影响》,某拟建高速公路长度为120km,则该项目的生态评价成图比例尺应()。
禁止向水体排放下列哪些废水
某地区一栋标志性办公楼地上106层,地下5层,建筑高度为412m,总建筑面积为363000m2,耐火等级一级,屋顶设有直升机停机坪,共设置8个避难层。每层均设有消防电梯。该办公楼按有关国家工程建设消防技术标准配置了消防设施及器材。根据以上材料,回
中国一家跨国公司A公司,在乙国设立子公司B公司。B公司在丙国设立C公司,为B公司的子公司;A公司和B公司各持有下一附属公司50%的股权,其余50%为所在国股东持有;2019年度A、B、C公司国内税前所得分别为1000万元、600万元和400万元;中国、
注册会计师在确定某一与治理层沟通过的事项是否构成关键审计事项时,下列各项中,可能需要考虑的有()。
行政诉讼法规定,因限制人身自由的强制措施引起的行政诉讼,由原告或被告所在地人民法院管辖,这里的原告所在地不包括()。
生产力反映的是个人和社会的关系。()
2+。
下列有关我国保护生态环境方面的举措,说法错误的是:
最新回复
(
0
)