This is an interesting comparison to judge the runaway executive salaries in this country. It turns out that Walmart CEO Michael Duke’s $35 million annual salary constitutes an hourly wage equal to the annual salary of the average Walmart employee.
New Walmart employees are paid $8.75 an hour — a gross salary of $13,650 a year. Thus, over a single lunch, Duke makes the yearly salary of one of his workers.
Walmart director of community affairs Steven Restivo sees nothing wrong with such a hefty salary: “I don’t think Mike Duke needs, as the CEO of a Fortune 1 company, needs me to defend his compensation package.”
The Institute for Policy Studies recently released a report stating that CEOs in the country’s top 500 companies make, on average, 319 times more than the average American worker. That is up from 30 to 1 in the 1970s.
This is a video of one of The Duke’s employee picnics:
Source: ABC.
Actually if you consider his fractional responsibility to the company his pay is quite in line with what he should be making. The idea that a CEO is overpaid because he makes 30 million and his lowest rank employee makes just 20K a year is quite irrational given the company size.
It is quite simple; the CEO of any company is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the company, from the bottom up. Yes he delegates portions of this to his lower ranked people, so you would only hold him fractionally responsible for it.
The formula is quite simple and shows fairly how much any level within a company should make, and surprisingly Wal*Mart’s Numbers actually are in line with it.
CEO’s make 250(k) to 50 million dollars a year, not even including BONUSES!