高管薪酬过高问题不解决，美国不可能再次伟大

上周四，众议院将围绕一项旨在对华尔街解绑的计划进行投票，该计划旨在废除奥巴马时代针对企业CEO的几项薪酬改革，比如禁止对银行家发放高额奖金以避免过高风险、要求上市企业必须报告CEO与员工中位薪水的比例等。然而美国不但不应该推翻这些适度的薪酬改革，反而应该推行一些更大胆的方案，比如用税收和政府项目分包等手段来奖励那些CEO薪酬较为合理的企业。

虽然特朗普在竞选期间也曾批评过CEO薪水过高的问题，但自从就任以来，面对他的共和党同袍力主废止奥马巴CEO薪酬改革的汹汹之势，特朗普却并没有给予哪怕一丁点的关注。

如果特朗普真的想“让美国再次伟大”，他首先要做的事情之一，就是要让企业高管的薪酬回归到过去几十年的那种较为合理的水平。在1980年，美国大型企业的负责人与普通工人的平均薪酬比大约为42比1，而如今这个比例已经飙升到了347比1。

这种极端的薪酬差距不仅显失公平，对于企业的业务来说也是不利的。

企业文化

每年直接进入企业高管口袋里的那几百万美刀，对于美国企业的总成本来说自然不算什么，但对于员工士气的影响却是巨大的。如果你的老板的薪水比你高了347倍，你难免会产生“我在团队里算什么”的卑微感。据2016年Glassdoor公司针对120万人进行的一项调查显示，CEO的薪酬越高，员工对老板的认可度一般就越低，二者之间呈现出强烈的相关性。

布鲁金斯学会的一项研究也得出了类似的结论，研究发现，“地位的巨大差异”会抑制员工的参与度。《美国行政科学季刊》（Administrative Science Quarterly）上发表的一篇研究也认为，“工人与管理层之间的极端工资差距削弱了他们对企业的信任感，使他们无法将自己视为企业的利益相关者。”

股票回购

目前的薪酬体系也滋长了一种短期的投机心态，这不仅对个体企业有害，甚至对整体经济都会产生负面影响。2008年的金融危机便是这种危险的“奖金文化”催生出的一个悲剧的特例。华尔街的高管们都死死地盯着奖金目标，因此采取了过于冒险的经营策略，这在短期内虽然让他们大赚了一笔，但“纸牌屋”一旦坍塌，就会给经济带来灾难性的损失。

CEO的高薪带来的另一个问题，就是股票的回购狂潮。据马萨诸塞州大学洛厄尔教授威廉•拉佐尼克计算，从2005年到2014年，美国的上市企业500强用于回购股票的资金就超过了3.7万亿，超过了这些企业净收入的一半。CEO们之所以喜欢回购股票，就是因为他们的工资是与股价挂钩的，所以他们要人为地推高股票的价值。然而这么多利润都用于回购股票了，企业用于研发、员工培训和其他长期发展用途的钱自然就少了。商学院管这种现象叫“吃玉米种子”，即寅吃卯粮。

据彭博社报道，去年美国企业薪资最高的CEO是沃尔玛电商部门的负责人马克•劳尔，达到了2.369亿美元。作为全美雇佣工人最多的企业，如果沃尔玛能给低收入的工人多付些工资，给高管们少付些工资，那么由此带来的连带效应也会对整体经济更加有益。因为低收入家庭几乎会把挣来的每一块钱都花出去，这些钱最终又回到了流通领域，从而刺激了经济。而像劳尔这样的企业高管，当然是会把一大笔钱存起来，这笔钱对经济产生不了任何贡献。

最有希望整治CEO薪酬过高乱象的地方并不是华盛顿。去年12月，波特兰市议会出台了一项决定，对企业高管与普通工人的薪资比超过100倍的企业，在现有的2.2%的地方企业利润税的基础上，还要再额外征收10%的附加税。继波特兰之后，又有五个州的立法机关通过了类似的法案。

在一个理想的世界中，政府不需要强迫企业做一些本应该是常识的事情。但今天的一些商业领袖已经深陷贪欲，无法自拔了。对于这样一个失去理性的CEO薪酬体系，是应该举起改革的大刀阔斧，让这些企业清醒清醒了。（财富中文网）

本文作者Steven Clifford是King Broadcasting公司的前任首席执行官，也是《CEO薪酬机器：对美国的破坏性以及如何遏止》（The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop It）一书的作者。本文另一作者Sarah Anderson是全球经济项目（Global Economy Project）负责人，也是美国政策研究学会官方博客Inequality.org的共同编辑。

译者：朴成奎

The House is expected to vote Thursday on a Wall Street deregulation plan that would roll back several Obama-era CEO pay reforms, including a ban on banker bonuses that encourage excessive risk, and a new regulation that requires publicly held corporations to report the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay. But instead of rolling back modest pay reforms already on the books, lawmakers should be pushing for bolder solutions, such as using tax and government contracting policies that reward firms with reasonable CEO pay levels.

While President Donald Trump bashed high CEO pay on the campaign trail, since taking office, he hasn’t raised the slightest concern about his fellow Republicans’ crusade to repeal Obama-era executive compensation reforms.

If Trump truly wants to “make America great again,” one of his primary goals should be to restore CEO pay to the more rational levels of decades past. In 1980, the gap between average pay for the heads of large U.S. corporations and typical workers ran about 42 to 1. Today, this pay ratio stands at 347 to 1.

These extreme disparities are not only unfair, but they’re bad for business.

Company culture

The mega-millions that flow directly into executives’ pockets every year are just a small fraction of the total cost to American companies. But the effects on employee morale carry a much higher price. When the boss makes 347 times more than you, it’s difficult to swallow the canard that “there is no ‘I’ in team.” A 2016 Glassdoor survey of 1.2 million people bears this out statistically, finding a strong correlation between high CEO pay and low employee approval ratings for their bosses.

A Brookings Institution analysis reached a similar conclusion, finding that “large differences in status” within companies can inhibit participation. And in a study published in Administrative Science Quarterly, four researchers agreed that “extreme wage differentials between workers and management discourage trust and prevent employees from seeing themselves as stakeholders.”

Stock buybacks

The current compensation system also encourages a short-term mentality that is harmful not only for individual corporations, but for the whole economy. The 2008 financial crisis was just one particularly dramatic example of this dangerous “bonus culture.” Wall Street executives fixated on hitting bonus targets pursued excessively risky strategies that boosted the size of their paychecks in the short term but caused catastrophic economic damage when the house of cards came crashing down.

Another is the stock buyback craze. University of Massachusetts Lowell Professor William Lazonick has calculated that from 2005 to 2014, America’s 500 largest publicly traded corporations spent $3.7 trillion—over half their net income—repurchasing their own shares. CEOs love these buybacks because they artificially inflate the value of their stock-based pay. But by using up so much of their profits to buy back stock, corporations have less to spend on research and development, workforce training, and other long-term productive purposes. In business school, they call this “eating the seed corn.”

Last year’s largest executive pay package—at $236.9 million—went to Marc Lore, the CEO of Walmart’s e-commerce division, according to Bloomberg. If the nation’s largest employer instead paid their low-income workers more and top management less, the beneficial ripple effects would be much larger since low-income families need to spend nearly every dollar they make, whereas executives like Lore squirrel away a good share.

The strongest signs of hope of reining in runaway CEO pay are coming from outside of Washington. Last December, the city council in Portland, Ore. adopted a 10% surtax on top of its existing 2.2% local corporate profits tax on corporations with pay gaps of more than 100 to 1. Since then, legislators in five states have introduced similar bills.

In an ideal world, government wouldn’t need to push corporations to do something that should be common sense. But greed has rendered today’s business leaders unable to help themselves. Blunt policy instruments are needed to knock some sense into a CEO pay system gone mad.

Steven Clifford, the former CEO of King Broadcasting, is the author of The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop It (Blue Rider Press). Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies.