Life is good for CEOs. Unless I'm mistaken, hasn't the general concensus been that the economy wasn't doing so hot in 2003? Then why oh why did the CEOs of S&P 500 companies receive a whopping pay raise of 22 percent? Life is good if you're rich. It's a good thing that the federal minimum wage was finally increased from $5.15 because otherwise this would seem incredibly unfair to workers. What? It hasn't been raised since 1997? And it's value in constant dollars has declined over that same period?
Why, that's insane! Certainly our great leader, George W. Bush, must be doing something about this. What? Bush has blocked attempts to raise the minimum wage?
Well then surely we can't raise minimum wage because it would harm businesses. What? Employment grew by millions after the minimum wage was raised in 1997?
Well then it must be because only teenagers are the only ones making minimum wage, and even for adults, minimum wage is enough to live off of. No?
You get the point.
Curious what other CEOs earn? Check out the CEO paywatch database. For example, Halliburton CEO David Lesar made $7.75 million in 2002. I'm sure that he is earning every penny of it. It's a good thing that Halliburton hasn't done anything like losing $18.6 million dollars of government property in Iraq. That seems like the sort of thing that would keep you from getting more government contracts. Scratch that. Halliburton was just awarded another $500 million contract with the Navy.
*sigh* If the "handover of power" in Iraq weren't going so smoothly, this might be just the sort of thing to get pissed off about.