Americans seem pretty mad, which makes sitting politicians pretty nervous. Scrambling to respond to outrage over AIG executive bonuses, bank bailouts, and auto-company assistance, the chief of General Motors had to walk the plank and the Democratic leadership pushed a doomed, but appealing, bill to impose a 90-percent levy on bank executives’ bonuses.
But, a recent Financial Times survey shows Americans may not be so fierce after all. Although 75 percent of the Americans and Europeans polled said they believed managers were overpaid and unethical, the Americans and Brits were not in favor of changing the bonus system, which is the way managers get overpaid. This is strange indeed. American executives are paid far more, in absolute terms and in comparison to the average worker. The Economic Policy Institute tracks the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay across countries: The U.S. executive is paid 400 times more than the average worker, the European executives — and they are no slouches — are paid over 10 to 20 times the average worker in their nations.
High pay and low outrage? Perhaps the answer to the paradox is that Americans are different in key other areas too. The United States has less economic support for the unemployed, fewer unions, and no universal health care.
In Germany, Italy, and the UK more than one out of 5 workers are in a union, in the US, one out of 11 workers are in a union. It might be tempting to think Americans like rich people more than the Europeans, but it’s more likely that Americans are less likely to have any meaningful way to complain.
From Richard Milne’s article:
“Germans, French, Italians and Spanish favor a smaller role for bonuses. But only about a third of people in the US and UK support such a move, with about the same number opposing it. … The poll was conducted online by Harris Interactive among a total of 6,449 adults in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.S. between March 25 and 31.”
