Obama caps salaries of CEOs from taxpayer-funded companies

[Jake]

Removing any possibility such a company will attract talented executives. Populism at its god damned worst.

[Jake]

If we're going to have a bailout we should be using the money for a bailout, not for a handout.

Please explain how a struggling company (already a not attractive destination for an executive) is going to attract the talented individuals they need to become profitable again if they cannot offer a salary commensurate with the market. That's like expecting a baseball team to get better by capping their spending at $20 million. The longer these companies stay in this condition the longer we use taxpayer money to prop them up.

The populism at it's god damned worst is how people don't think about these things when they answer these polls.

[Jake]

Its called making things fair.

False. CEOs, at least good ones, have a rare skillset deserving of significant compensation. It doesn't make sense to cap how much a struggling company can pay someone as they won't be able to attract talented executives.

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My example does not and even those leagues that do have caps to reflect disparities in market size. There isn't a salary cap in football because the NFL is subsidizing every team's payroll.

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Irrelevant. Capping salaries isn't going to end greed; it's just going to ensure that companies that are in trouble can't pay for great executives.

[Jake]

Think of it this way: without the government intervention their salaries would be precisely zero. I doubt any bank CEO will be able to find any job higher than Wal Mart greeter. Okay, maybe they can make speeches and write books.

Better to make half a million trying to salvage a crashing bank than to make $20K welcoming people to Wal Mart, right?

I'm not talking about CEOs already in place.