It depends on what you mean by "the CEO." If we're talking about S&P 500 CEOs (which is itself an overly broad proxy for the "corporate giants" that are the subject of this article), they're definitely members of the 1%.[1]
I full heartedly disagree. Maybe the number "one" is wrong, maybe it's 0.1%, but the industrial emperor is not the same kind of people as today's typcial CEO. Today's CEOs have to be hard working, good looking, result oriented people, just like you and me fearing to get wacked at any mistake or delay. It's just that they live on a higher level than we, but still the same kind of life.
The "Baronical CEO" is the kind of guy who grows a belly in his fourties, and spends just as much time in the club with the other guys drinking and pretty girls as in the office. This is not today's typical CEO.
However, if you want to imply that even the richest of the richest are sh*tting their pants because they also don't know how everything will continue, then I would agree as well. It's likely that fewer and fewer people have a relaxed life, and those who have mostly live that way due to lack of oversight.
I would agree with that point if it would result in CEOs being less hard working people.
What all people want is a stable, save, maybe a little boring, position that shows other people they are respectable and that pays the monthly bills. But not even the highest level of employee has that safety any more. And while they get more money even when they get fired, a fired CEO is still considered a loser, just as you and me, and they fear being considered a loser just as much as you and me. And maybe what increases their pressure back to the sam level as ours is that their failure is way more public than ours. If you lose your job and you get a new one, you can pretend everything is just as it was before. They can not. Everybody has seen the articles in the news paper and know some (true or not) reasons for why they failed.
A fired CEO of a company in the orbit we're talking about (I mean, I'm the "CEO" of a company, but I obviously am not pulling in a hojillion dollars a year in revenue, so, different thing) doesn't need to ever work again. A CEO might be "labor", sure, but they are compensated sufficiently to de facto buy into capital in a way even people not too many percentiles down never, ever can. This is a difference of kind.
The question here isn't "do you work hard," it's "are you labor or have you capital", and the difference when the latter is true is overwhelmingly transformative compared to when only the former is true.
There's some survivorship bias due the "orbit we're talking about".
The reason the new CEO is coming into place is that the old one didn't work out as intended, and the board has set its sight on someone they think would do a better job. Such desirable person is usually not living off unemployment benefits, is comfortable financially already, therefore has little motivation to jump ship unless he gets a substantial increase in pay.
The board could potentially hire via an ad in the paper or a temp agency advertising a salary at 50c above minimum, saving stockholders (themselves included) massive amounts of money, but yet even the most financially stingy and cost-hawking shareholders - private equity folks and activist shareholders - usually don't resort to that.
If they're under consideration for such a job, what I said more often than not holds true, too. We're fundamentally not talking about "labor" in the sense that erikb was using it, we're talking about labor-with-capital-access and that's just a straight-up different story.
I'd go farther to say at most large-ish companies, even one level down (sometimes two) from the CEO means you'll never have to work again in your life. I think people forget just how much these senior executives make.
> Today's CEOs have to be hard working, good looking, result oriented people, just like you and me fearing to get wacked at any mistake or delay.
Yea, because they'll be struggling to put food on the table.
What an out of touch comment.
No one likes to fail or get fired. But most working class aren't afraid of getting fired because of failure-but because they need food/place to stay/healthcare/have to care for a family. Most CEOs in that level are far beyond that.
You're not wrong about the power shift, but I think you're over-stating the anxiety. The pattern that we've seen has been increasing pay as boards and executives have adopted a speculative mindset. In effect, both have acknowledged that execs are now mercenaries rather than tenured employees.
[1]: http://www.equilar.com/reports/48-associated-press-ceo-pay-s...