Excessive? Rather!

Nice work if you can get it. And some do. Doubtless feeling more than entitled to it. But what that amounts to is a veritable king's ransom. How could anyone possibly think that they're entitled to earn that kind of remuneration for guiding a company through the normal intricacies of business management, sales, advertising, and profitability? Well, scratch some of those signposts of success. Even those corporations whose profit-levels have subsided from expectations, rendering them on the cusp of failure, have seen fit to heap mounds of gratitude in the form of extreme salaries on their CEOs.

Executive heads of corporations, with all the responsibilities inherent in those positions, guiding the business unerringly toward growth and profits, build international reputations for themselves as capable and resourcefully intelligent managers. Boards of directors, shareholders, the firms' employees, depend upon their abilities to advance the futures of these enterprises. Society in general profits from the success of well-run operations, and governments succour them, thankful for the business taxes that accrue to the national treasury and employment opportunities to their populations.

But, Holy Cow! It's worth a whistle of admiration (or condemnation, as the case may be) to realize that "The 100 highest paid CEOs of Canadian publicly traded corporations received an average of $10-million-plus, in total compensation in 2007", according to a report issued by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. That seems a trifle excessive; the ten million in compensatory gratitude for guiding a company to success is, however, understandably exalted as outstanding performance on the part of a single individual, not necessarily consonant with the executive skills of that individual.

At that incredible rate of pay, it takes four minutes for the country's top-paid executives to earn a salary equal to what the average Canadian worker receives in the space of an entire working year. Seems a trifle out of whack by anyone's estimation. Those sky-high earners saw an increase of almost 30% from earnings of the previous year. Compare that to the almost-nil increase of 3.2% the ordinary Canadian wage-earner saw; zip, comparing wage gains to cost-of-living increases.

Something's odoriferous in the State of Canader. Put another way, the average Canadian wage is a mite over $40-thousand. Those among us who earn in the $100-thousand range are considered to be in a very healthy income bracket. Upper middle-class, if not exactly top crust. But that's roughly what top executives earn
on average in the space of a single day. How's that for perspective? We could only wish. Of course life offers other satisfactions, including which a day's work well done is but one. And a fulsomely-generous compensation package another.

Still, that's two hundred and fifty-nine times the wealth garnered through salaries and other perquisatory compensations for top executives as opposed to the modest salaries earned on average for the ordinary Canadian. Oops, the top 50 high earners actually received 398 times the average wage. That wide a wage gap between working executives, however elevated on the white-collar scale, and that bottom-heavy aggregate below, is astounding, and hardly justifiable.

So, what're we going to do to balance the ledger? Bearing in mind that when companies fail to produce as expected, it's the workers at the low edge of subsistence, those who actually perform the physical labour who bear the brunt of disappointment through evaporating jobs, while the brilliant CEO who led the company to failure is still lauded and laden with lavish separation allowances.

Grin and bare it.