Well said

John Moore nicely rebuts the claim that we should be grateful for the privilege of paying obscene amounts to our corporate betters:

The average working Canadian earns $43,000 a year. The average for the top 100 CEOs is 155 times that. Roll that figure around for a second. Think of what you earn in a year. Now imagine being paid 155 times more. Not twice as much. Not 10 times. 155 times.

That’s not merit. That’s not about stockholder value. That’s a shakedown. And it’s further proof that when elites are responsible for their own pay, they make out like bandits. Kelly insists that boards of directors set executive compensation based on shareholder value, ignoring the fact that directors come from the same spoiled-rotten, self-entitled class as the CEOs they hire and pay.
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These aren’t entrepreneurs, venture capitalists or private company owners. They are nothing more than high ranking employees. Yet they expect their earnings to rival those of people who risk all and genuinely create wealth. And often they grow their companies through massive layoffs of those who earn less.

In his column lampooning the executive-compensation study, Kelly McParland insists “the money doesn’t come from your pocket or mine.” It most certainly does if we are shareholders. More importantly, thanks to the vagaries of Canadian tax laws, when executives exercise their generous stock options, taxpayers are on the hook. The average lost tax revenue for each of the 100 top paid CEOs in Canada amounted to $467,000. That’s a heck of a lot more galling than the sundry restaurant receipts of some scandal-plagued assistant deputy minister, but it seems the fans of big business can’t get worked up about it.