Separate Realities: The Dream and the Iceberg - Scarecrow Press

74 Chapter 2
but the salary plus bonus incomes for the ten highest compensated CEOs in
the survey averaged “only” $5.9 million. This was the case because in addition
to their salary and bonus incomes, the top ten CEOs collectively received a total
of $877.6 million in “option gains” income (an average of $87.8 million
each). 157 These figures illustrate that for the ten top-paid CEOs in the 2006
USA Today survey, the average salary and bonus income for each CEO
amounted to only about 7 percent of the average total compensation received
by each member of this group.
The incomes of credentialed-class managers and white-collar professionals
who assist superclass elites in sustaining the corporate project are nowhere
near those of superclass members, but they are still substantial. In Washington,
D.C., the salary received by members of Congress has often been viewed
as the top of the middle class and, thus, as the floor of the upper middle
class. 158 In 2007, that floor was $168,500. 159 This figure represents an approximate
baseline minimum for privileged-class managers and professionals, especially
in large private-sector firms. Senior corporate office holders, such as
chief financial officers (CFOs), in midsized firms illustrate salary “upgrades”
(above congressional salaries) routinely paid to privileged-class members. In
the mid-2000s, the annual median income for CFOs in firms with sales between
$100 and $500 million was $198,855. Income levels of CFOs in larger
firms are much higher (typically seven figures) than for CFOs in midsized
firms. Only in smaller firms (annual sales between $10 and $25 million) do
we find CFO incomes below congressional salaries, but even there CFO median
pay was still a respectable $103,762. 160
From newly rich corporate officers to the oldest American family fortunes,
skybox-level incomes and wealth are clearly linked to the ongoing production
of corporate profits. Privileged-class corporate officers understand this connection.
Therefore, superclass members actively involved in corporate governance,
along with a select group of upwardly mobile credentialed-class members
groomed by superclass sponsors, work diligently to ensure the continued
financial health, power, and survival of the corporate enterprise. At the highest
levels of wealth, the corporate basis of immense personal wealth is clearly
illustrated by CEO fortunes linked to specific firms. Examples include Bill
Gates’s $50 billion Microsoft-based fortune, Warren E. Buffett’s $42 billion
Berkshire-based empire, and Philip H. Knight’s $7.3 billion Nike-based holdings.
161 Large corporations are clearly the engines that generate the income
and wealth of the superclass and also of its credentialed-class allies.
As a result of privileged-class ownership and control of large firms, the class
interests of this group are served in three ways. First, much of the value of the
goods and services produced by workers is distributed through corporatebased
channels and practices to superclass corporate owners and to their
credentialed-class allies. The heart of this process is simple and increasingly
transparent today. It begins with corporations’ paying workers far less (in
wages and benefits) than the market value of what they produce. The differ-