Posted on July 1, 2006
Filed Under Business, Ideas, Video Podcasts

Let's do some math and see how to use consciousness to conquer greed.

7:48 minutes; 48.3 MB

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About Today's Show

I think as humans we are transitioning from pure "old brain" behavior to more conscious choices. Jen was talking about this in her and Kent's video review of "An Inconvenient Truth." It's more efficient perhaps to change ourselves than to wait for others. We don't have to be at the mercy of our fear and greed; we can choose to act otherwise, without losing the thrill of the game that so many enjoy.

I found the original source for the study I mentioned regarding average CEO pay being 262 times more than average employee pay. I was then shocked to read that CEO pay is actually 821 times more than a minimum wage worker. As recently as 1978, the CEO pay was only 78 times more than a minimum wage worker.

So today I propose a plan for changing how money gets distributed in a company. Ben and Jerry came up with it first, but they were sooo radical, with only a 5x differential between top and bottom pay scales, that they were dismissed by most "serious" business people. I think it is time to revisit the concept.

I think companies can arbitrarily set salary levels to more fairly compensate each employee, and if all employees benefit when the company is more successful, then I believe they will pull together to produce a better product - good for the company, its employees, and the customers who buy the stuff the company makes.

Here's Dilbert's take on the topic.

Our wonderful theme music is Kaimoku: The Ukulele Experiment

Hawaiian words
HoÊ»okaulike: to balance

Tags: cea, minimum wage, hawaii, dog, vlog, video,video podcast,walk, beach, roxanne darling, lexi, kaimoku

Comments

9 Responses to “Beach Walk #129 – Math With Rox”

Richard on July 2nd, 2006 12:39 pm

As simple as I can make it, The WORLD needs to see this Beach Walk show. GREAT, GREAT show.

Barbara on July 3rd, 2006 2:09 am

So much for 'old' math and 'new' math. Here's to 'Roxy' math! Making conscious choices for empowered living for all people. Yeehaw!

Rox on July 11th, 2006 10:53 am

Fortune throws out the "last century" playbook for CEO's, right in line with what we've been talking about here.

Rox on August 9th, 2006 11:14 am

I read an amazing article by Robert Samuelson in Newsweek (print) lambasting CEO pay. He is normally a conservative editorial writer. But look at these quotes:
CEO's "seem to regard being a multimillionaire as an entitlement befitting their position."
They have "contrived a moral code that exempts them from self-control, a moral code that justifies grabbing as much as they can."
"They are slowly becoming a threat to the very system they claim to represent."

I think it is more effective to change from within, rather than being the battering rams on the outside. Let's look for more evidence of CEO's acting less selfishly and more reponsibly towards their companies and their communities.

Beach Walks with Rox - A Little Aloha Every Day » Blog Archive » Beach Walk #316 - CEO Pay Part 2 on January 5th, 2007 7:44 pm

[...] There was a good piece in The Week Magazine about how investors can fight back regarding overpaid CEO's. Mind you, there are a lot of obstacles to be surounted, the fact that we are even having this discussion is a step forward I think. I first talked about CEO pay on Math with Rox [...]

Rox on January 24th, 2007 10:28 am

Sen. Jim Webb mentioned this out of control ratio of CEO pay to average worker salaries in his response to Pres Bush's speech last night.
Read and watch it here.

Beach Walks with Rox - A Little Aloha Every Day » Blog Archive » Beach Walk 371R - Math with Rox on March 1st, 2007 10:23 pm

[...] You can read the original show notes here. [...]

Beach Walk #580 - Preserve Beach Access Hawaii on January 30th, 2008 12:02 am

[...] in Hawaii. No surprise to most, it is a shrinking resource despite a growing population. You know me and math - and this equation doesn't work out well! You can read an awesome list of facts and state [...]

Beach Walk 644 - CEO Pay Revisited on June 4th, 2008 7:16 am

[...] I like this concept of "marking the territory" - not like a dog, but as students of consciousness. It is so easy to get caught up in the robotic rush of repetition, day in and day out. I read in Fortune a few months ago about how AmEx has dramatically restructured its CEO pay for Kenneth Chenault. In brief, he gets a relatively low base pay, and then stock options (not restricted stock) if he meets performance criteria over an unusually long 6-year period. It's worth noting that those options are worthwhile only if the stock price is preserved; there is no guaranteed price on them. I hope other companies will begin to pull back the reins on the exorbitant CEO pay packages that have become too common. Here was my early take on CEO pay: Beach Walk 129 - Math with Rox [...]