Okay dokey 250K and a mountain bike with a basket in front AND a BIG horn that goes KA DOO KAH.

I wouldn't be able to maintain my lifestyle at anything less than $350k and a rubber band plane.

Then you are a bloated robber baron.

I'd go for the Ben & Jerry's rule -- but set the lowest to highest income ratio ratio at somewhere between 20 and 40. Outside that ratio, I'd tax anyone above it at 101%. Problem solved. BTW, B & J had the ratio set at 5 in the eighties!

I say give them a reasonable stipend (10 times the average wage at the company, excluding execs), and then the rest is performance related.

What's the chances of a grass roots movement on this.

That's the problem -- they aren't building vehicles that people want to buy, and they have failed to do so for decades.

Detroit has never produced decent small and mid-sized cars, which have long been important in the American market. In recent years, the Big 3 were successful in only one major vehicle class -- trucks -- and failed to have a diversified lineup that could serve a diverse cross-section of the market. And what they did sell was moved by using cheap financing and substantial discounting, not by building products for which customers were happy to pay retail.

In effect, GM in particular turned what was supposed to be a manufacturing company into an oil hedge fund that put everything on a short position, while having to pay their customers to play.

That all-eggs-in-one-basket plan was always destined for disaster. They were in danger before oil prices increased and credit crunched, it just took awhile for the problems to make themselves obvious to the average person. They put themselves into this position, and it is entirely their own faults that they find themselves where they are now.

It's hard to attract top notch talent with pay structures like that. Ben and Jerry's specifically had issues with this, and had to relax their compensation policies in order to hire an outside CEO. If the pay is too low, you will get what you pay for.

How long did it take you to figure out how to spell 'ka doo kah'??

And the greediness of people should prevent them from being hired. I'm sorry, but if the POTUS is only paid $400k, why should the CEO of a mere company make more than him/her? The POTUS is the most important person in the country, if I'm not mistaken.

but no big horn that goes KA DOO KAH!

I can not tell a lie. I've seen it written before. .

Politicians don't do it for the cash, they do it for the power and the glory.

The problem isn't with executive compensation, it's with the definitions that are used to define what is or isn't acceptable executive performance.

Short-term profits are often pursued at the expense of long-term investment and sustainability. When companies are evaluated strictly by the numbers, that sort of tunnelvision is inevitable.

Okay folks, seriously, how much do YOU really need to live on? If someone said, how much more salary would you need, I'd say 20 percent to start and then after that COLA every year.

Abosolutely agree. I've never understood taking the band-aid aproach, in lieu of a real, long-term solution or business plan. It's this tunnelvision that could lead (or maybe has led?) to the downfall of capitalism, or would that be attributed to corporate greed?