Brian Williams Earns 350 Times More Than The Average TV
News Anchor
by Mike Flynn18 Jan 2015Washington, DC
The perceived disparity between a company’s CEO and its
average worker has been a trope of the left and an obsession of the news media
for decades. The argument goes that a CEO’s pay comes at the expense of
rank-and-file workers, and fuels a level of animosity that necessitates a
government response. It is a canard that would be rightly ridiculed in any
other sector of our society.
Television’s top news anchor, NBC’s Brian Williams, earns a reported
$13 million a year to read the news. His pay packet is 350 times the earnings
of the average TV news anchor, reporter or correspondent, who pull in around
$37,000 a year. This disparity far surpasses the 150-1 ratio earned by the
average CEO, according
to Bloomberg.
If Brian Williams’ salary were brought in-line with the
average amount CEO pay eclipses that of rank-and-file workers, his earnings
would be around $5.5 million a year, rather than $13 million. No one
is suggesting Mr. Williams take such a pay cut.
The average actor and actress in the US earns about $40,000
a year. The average professional athlete in the United States earns about
$170,000 a year. Nobody would expect Matt Damon or LeBron James to take a
massive wage cut to bring themselves into the 150-1 CEO pay average. Keep in
mind, though, that, like Mr. Williams, Damon and LeBron are earning hundreds of
times more than the average person doing the exact same job.
The disparity between the earnings of CEOs and their
employees is a comparison based on people doing entirely different jobs. If it
is ludicrous to suggest that Brian Williams earnings should be no more than
some multiple more than someone else doing his job, it is patently absurd that
a CEO should face such a limit for doing a fundamentally different job than
someone else.
CEOs often make millions of dollars a year for doing
an exceedingly difficult job. A CEO must shepherd enormous enterprises
with thousands of employees through a highly competitive and constantly
evolving global marketplace. A misstep can cost billions of dollars. Indeed,
the average tenure of a CEO is just eight years, down a full three years
from a decade ago.
If a CEO gets the decisions right, though, billions of
dollars in wealth can be created and, in some cases, entirely new markets can
be born. Would Apple shareholders rest easier if they knew Steve Jobs or
another CEO didn’t earn more than some multiple above the average Apple worker?
Obviously, not every CEO is Steve Jobs. Neither is every CEO
Enron’s Ken Lay, whose asleep-at-the-wheel management style vaporized billions
in shareholder and employee equity. These decisions must be left to the market,
because no panel of experts can divine the correct amount of anyone’s pay.
No panel of experts would deduce that Brian William’s skill
at reading text was worth 350 times the average pay of other TV presenters.
That is a decision made best by his bosses and the viewing public. This truth
is even more pronounced for CEOs.
Bloomberg
Bloomberg News
is a division of Bloomberg LP.
Note: Michael R.
Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg
LP, Emma Bloomberg’s father, and
was a donor for the Robin Hood
Foundation.
Emma
Bloomberg is Michael R. Bloomberg’s
daughter, and was the senior planning officer for the Robin Hood Foundation.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Robin Hood Foundation.
George
Soros was the chairman for the Foundation
to Promote Open Society.
Brian Williams
is a director at the Robin Hood
Foundation, and the anchor for the NBC
Nightly News.
Tom
Brokaw was a director at the Robin
Hood Foundation, and an anchor for the NBC
Nightly News.
Jeff
Zucker is a director at the Robin
Hood Foundation, and was an executive producer for the NBC Nightly News.
1 comment:
He's paid way too much! I wonder how their salaries are determined?
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