Source: http://news.yahoo.com
The New Legalist editor’s note: $1 salary does not mean anything when you think about how big capital has usurped the major part of value of all social commodities that should belong to all mankind. See the reasoning below from A New Political Economy: A theory of three sources of value & 3-tier joint community ownership (1) --
Three-Source Value (of social products) Theory :
1. The Nature-endowed potential value hidden in the primary raw materials for production -- the primary source of value of all products.
2. The collective wisdom of all humanity accumulated through all generations, as embodied in tools, equipments, skills, and processed materials of production -- the second important source of value of all commodities, especially of modern high-tech ones.
3. Current labor of human individuals, labor in a broader sense, which includes:
a. On-the-spot labor of front-line workers;
b. Past-labor-turned just capital (for “just capital” see below), such as savings from wage income used as current investment;
c. Creative labor of scientists and technologists as embodied in new inventions and innovations (based, first of all, on accumulated collective human wisdom, of course);
d. The organizing, operating and risk-taking work of entrepreneurs of business ventures and/or of new product developers;
e. The work of managers running a business;
f. The work of government workers supervising and servicing society on a macro scale, which is also an indispensable part of social production;
g. The work of cultural and educational workers for the personal development of all laborers and all people;
h. The supporting work of laborers’ family members for maintaining their working ability and for raising the young and assisting the old as future and past providers of labor.
…
I-4. Value of Collective Human Wisdom
No production can proceed without material means and technological skills. Means of production contains, besides hidden potential value from Nature, also the value of collective wisdom of all humanity; while production technology contains, besides the current creative mental labor value of individual inventors and innovators, also collective human wisdom inherited from the long past. Human wisdom includes metaphysical insight as well as knowledge about the physical world, which serves as a basis for current inventions and innovations.
Like the Nature-endowed value in all materials, the value of collective wisdom to people can never be measured, calculated, indicated by any numbers, any math equations, any economic theories, either! We should not, however, ignore the existence of their value just because they cannot be measured, just as one cannot ignore the existence of one’s own head just because one cannot measure its weight!
Furthermore, the value of collective wisdom should also in principle belong jointly to all mankind of all generations to come on earth, not to any individual persons, any groups, or any regional communities (including nation-states). This view has also been shared by some outstanding thinkers.(see later.) This truth has been concealed by the atomistic individualist worldview and methodology of Western economics, which regards the society as an aggregation of isolated individual humans with only external mechanic connections, but no internal, organic, socio-historical interpenetration and interdependence and which serves to cover up the injustice of a few people or groups’ exclusive possession of such values.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google paid co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin their customary $1 salaries last year while Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt’s compensation more than doubled to $19.3 million.
Most of Schmidt’s raise stemmed from stock grants valued at $11.4 million. Google issued them to make up for an administrative error in the handling of another large award given to Schmidt in February 2011, according to regulatory documents filed Friday.
If not for the mix-up, Schmidt’s pay package last year would have risen 4 percent from the $7.6 million that he got in 2012.
Page, Google’s CEO, and Brin, another top executive, have insisted on capping their salaries at $1 annually since Google Inc. went public nearly a decade ago. It’s a symbolic gesture that many other Silicon Valley executives have made after amassing fortunes through the stock that they held in their respective companies.
Page, 41, and Brin, 40, each own Google stock currently worth about $26 billion.
Schmidt, 58, has accumulated wealth estimated at $9 billion by Forbes magazine. He also limited his salary to $1 annually while he was CEO.
The pay scale has changed dramatically since Schmidt turned over the CEO’s job to Page three years ago. In 2011, Schmidt received compensation valued at $101 million, with most of the money tied up in restricted stock designed to keep him working at Google. Last month, Google disclosed that Schmidt is receiving another stock award valued at $100 million this year.
As Google’s executive chairman, Schmidt primarily deals with regulatory issues, government relationships and company acquisitions. The Mountain View, Calif., company thought Schmidt did such a good job last year that he received his maximum cash bonus of $6 million to supplement his $1.25 million salary.
None of the other Google executives listed in the proxy statement qualified for their maximum bonuses last year.
Google and its stockholders fared well last year. The company’s earnings climbed 20 percent from the previous year to $12.9 billion and its stock price gained 58 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index increased by 30 percent last year.
The Associated Press formula calculates an executive’s total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest that the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pensions, a benefit that Google and most other technology companies don’t provide.
|
