Corporate executive salaries are out of line: Lou Dobbs
The United States has the largest wealth gap of most developed nations and the perils of income inequality have stirred up a debate between capitalism and socialism economic systems.
Corporate CEOs have received backlash over pay increases that have seen company executives’ salaries skyrocket over the past decade from stock options that are part of their compensation packages.
Disney CEO Bob Iger’s $65.6 million fiscal 2018 salary was blasted by Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of co-founder Roy Disney. She called out CEOs for hoarding corporate profits and failing to pay employees a decent wage in prepared testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Wednesday.
In a FOX Business capitalism vs. socialism town hall event town, Lou Dobbs agreed with the Disney heiress for railing against Iger’s compensation when the average Disney employee is making $50,000 a year.
“I think they’re right,” Dobbs said. “The CEO pay is out of line. It is absolutely an anomaly within American history.”
New York City Democratic Socialists of America spokesperson Bianca Cunningham said the corporate methodology is designed to benefit the few people at the top who make the decisions.
“I worked for Verizon [Wireless] for six years, I worked off a commission structure. Every year, I was making less and less money. They were coming in making arbitrary decisions that affected my life,” she told “Making Money” host Charles Payne.
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Dobbs said inflated CEO salaries should be addressed by shareholders and management to lessen the ratio.
“The worker, the employee, is watching management soar in compensation while workers have, just a disadvantage of part of that ratio. It should be much, much less than 500 to one,” he said.