Sunday, March 30, 2025

Letter to the Globe and Mail: CEO Compensation

[I've written several letters to the editor the past month. None has been published; I'll post three of them here.]
Re “RBC paid CEO $26 million last year” (March 7): In the fourth century BCE Plato suggested than in human societies governments should “permit a man to acquire double or triple, or as much as 4 times the amount [that is deemed to be at poverty levels].” Twenty-first century surveys suggest that most people today are in rough agreement; both liberals and conservatives feel CEOs should be paid 4-5 times what ordinary workers are paid.

Current starting pay for a bank teller at RBC is under $20 per hour (a little under $40,000 a year). I’ve just pulled out my calculator; RBC’s CEO was paid about 700 times more than that bank teller.

I’m with Plato.
[Here's a link to my long piece on this topic from some years ago, "Why Plato Was Right: Those at the Top Should Be Paid No More than Three or Four Times What We Pay Those at the Bottom": https://donlepan.blogspot.com/2017/06/bringing-end-to-luck-money-why-those-at.html]

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