CEO Compensation

Malcolm Gladwell on CEO pay:

After reading the article in the New York Times yesterday on the hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation given over the past few years to the CEO of Home Depot, I ran across this: in 1949, the highest paid CEO in America was Charlie Wilson of General Motors, who earned $586,100 in salary, bonus and stock. That's roughly equivalent to what some of the better-compensated CEO's are making today.

But what did Wilson pay in taxes? $430,350.

Times have changed.

The comments to the post are worth reading as well. Personally, I'm not sure a marginal tax rate of 74% is what we need. But I thought his last line was funny.