Steven Clifford has been a CEO at King Broadcasting Company for five years and National Mobile Television for nine years; He has been a director of thirteen companies and has chaired the compensation committee for both public and private companies. That makes it surprising that he is the author of “The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop it.”
Clifford notes that the pay gap between chief executive officers of publicly traded U.S. firms when compared to their workers has changed dramatically — its grown 95 times faster than that of their average workers. In the 1970s, CEOs were paid 25X their employees; today, CEOs get paid 300 to 700 times more than the average worker.
From 2011 to 2014, there were 4 CEOs who earned $100 million per year; these companies could have paid them 90% less and still generated the same returns. Despite all of the usual outrage, very people critics understand the factors that have caused the upward spiral in executive compensation.
All of the book discussed can be found here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras, on iTunes, Bloomberg, Overcast and Soundcloud.
Our earlier podcasts can all be found on iTunes, Soundcloud, Overcast and Bloomberg.
by Steve Clifford
The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop it by Steven Clifford
Steve Clifford’s Favorite Books
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
