To: Jim McMannis who wrote (173326 ) 3/6/2003 2:00:35 PM From: wanna_bmw Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 186894 Jim, the real issue here is whether executives are being overcompensated. If you hold a privately owned business, then no one can complain how much you pay yourself. But for publicly owned businesses, I guess this is the job of the board of directors, is it not? Maybe you are claiming that Intel's board is abusing their powers and overcompensating the execs. Intel has always been praised for having a relatively unbiased board, relative to many other companies, but you are of course entitled to your opinion if you think that abuse is still happening. If so, what would be your opinion of how to fix the problem? If not the board, then who should be the one to decide executive compensation? Should it be federally controlled? You tell me. But first tell me how you think the execs should be compensated. How do you decide fair compensation, anyway? Sounds like a controversial issue. Maybe there is no reasonable answer. After all, how do you judge whether an executive is doing a good job for the company or not? Surely the former CEO of Worldcom, with all his compensations, did not deserve them! But I think the line greys with other examples. How about if AMD execs deserved their compensations after losing the company more than $800M this year and doubling the company's debt? Did Hector deserve over a million stock options and a raise for his incompetence? Then again, maybe you feel that if it weren't for Hector, AMD would be bankrupt three times over already, and that Hector should be compensated for saving the company. See what I mean? In the case of Intel, sure the company lost huge amounts of market capital, but could it be argued that they maintained profitability in the face of the worst downturn the industry has ever faced? I think so! Then again, you might disagree. But - the fact remains that the topic is controversial. The argument of how much an executive could be compensated is a vast grey area, and well over my head. The conclusion I would come to is that if someone has a problem with executive compensation - if they truly believe that they've been cheated out of money because that money has gone to overcompensating someone who doesn't deserve it, then there are proper channels to express that sentiment, and this forum is not one of them. I think yours or Carl's soapbox preaching does nothing to address any real problems, but rather only manages to stir up negative sentiment from other forum members here. I would appreciate you diving into real solutions or new topics worthy of discussion. There is only so much to be said about your current point. Either you agree or disagree, but I don't think there is evidence either way.