The corporate jets Steve Wynn and Rupert Murdoch fly on probably make Rush Limbaugh's jet (seen here) look like Fung Wah.
CEO perks are on the rise. According to an analysis done for the
New York Times by Equilar, while median total pay only ("only") went up by 2.8 percent,
For the 100 highest-paid C.E.O.’s among American companies with revenue of more than $5 billion, the typical 2012 perks package was worth $320,635, up 18.7 percent from 2011[.]
So the
perks granted to these CEOs—just the perks thrown in on top of millions in salary and stock options—from use of corporate jets for personal travel to security staff to supersized versions of the pensions they've been so aggressively working to strip from average workers, came to more than seven times the median household income in the United States in 2012. And when you're looking at median total pay for these CEOs of more than $14 million a year, that little tiny 2.8 percent increase turns out to be an amount that would make most Americans consider themselves rich. Here are just a few of the perks the
Times' Nelson Schwartz lists:
- Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts racked up more than $1 million in personal travel on the company jet, and the company spent another $451,574 for the CEO's Las Vegas villa.
- Hertz rental cars CEO Mark Frissora did nearly $500,000 of personal flying on the company plane.
- Motorola Solutions gave Rutgers University $1.5 million for an endowed chair named after CEO Greg Brown. Quite the nice little tax-deductible boost to Brown's ego.
- At Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, Murdoch himself took $361,013 in personal flights on the corporate jet, while CEO Roger Ailes managed to spend $155,091 on personal use of corporate cars.
Meanwhile, the Republican politicians who idolize and answer to the corporate world preach austerity for the rest of us.