OVERPAID U.S. EXECUTIVES

Now that the wingnuts are so worried about restoring the Clinton era tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, it's time to do a little cross-cultural comparison.   According to this 6/30/2010 article in The Economist, Japanese executives have the lowest pay in the developed world:

For companies with sales over $11 billion, American bosses earn nines times more, and European ones four times more, according to Towers Watson, a human-resources consultancy.

This Bloomberg/Business Week article from 2/10/2009 put some numbers to these ratios:

CEOs at Japan's top 100 companies by market capitalization earned an average of around $1.5 million, compared with $13.3 million for American CEOs and $6.6 million for European chief execs at companies with revenues of higher than $10 billion, according to an analysis of 2004-06 data by Towers Perrin, a Stamford (Conn.) human resources firm.

A little closer to my point is the pay differential between American and Japanese auto company CEOs. This 10/10/2007 article from USA Today has some amazing numbers:

GM CEO Rick Wagoner earned $9.3 million in salary and bonus in 2006, nearly double what he earned in 2005.

Ford's new CEO, Alan Mulally, got $27.8 million in salary and bonus in his first few months on the job, including an $18.5 million signing bonus.

The Japanese CEOs get just a fraction of the pay and certainly their companies do at least as well:

Last year, Toyota's top 37 executives earned a combined $21.6 million in salary and bonuses, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. U.K. firm Manifest Information Services, which analyzes proxy information, estimates Toyota's top executive, Hiroshi Okuda, earned $903,000 in 2006.

At Honda, the top 21 earned $11.1 million, combined, in salary and bonuses, SEC filings show.