These 51 Top Executives had Total Compensation Combined in the most recent year disclosed of $928 mil, or an average of $18,199,000 for each of them, 14% higher than such average total compensation for top executives in both the Health Care and Finance sectors, and even 3% higher than such average total compensation for top executives in the Oil & Gas sector.
Included in these 51 were five top executives of GE, where the lowest total compensation of the five named executive officers was $14,550,000. I wonder if there might be more GE executives with total compensation of at least $10 mil.
There's clearly something wrong with the US economy when there are at least 51 of these top executives of Big US Defense Contractors who averaged total compensation of a huge $18,199,000.
The US Government, and thus US taxpayers, and paying for a very significant portion of the Revenues and Earnings of many of these large US Dept of Defense Contractors. Thus, with these huge salaries, there is serious harm to the US Debt level.
And so many of these large US Defense Contractors, in addition to generating incredibly high profit growth since 2002, also have very extravagant defined benefit pension plans that US taxpayers are in essence funding to a large degree.
I think the Pentagon has done a horrible job in controlling the costs of US government contracts. And the US Congress has also done a horrible job in its clear lack of financial oversight of the Pentagon. What kind of free democracy do we have when, unlike any other US Government Agency, the Pentagon demands that the US Dept of Defense not be audited, and the US Congress very weakly succumbs to the Pentagon's wish?
And the clear beneficiaries here are not just the Big US Defense Contractors, but also the Pentagon itself. And the substantial economic losers here are US taxpayers, saddled with the resultant US debt from this massive amount of Pentagon waste.
And so how do many Republicans in the US Senate react to this situation? They use every method to kill the nomination of the clearly qualified Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, mainly because one thing he wants to do is to take a much closer look at the money the Pentagon spends, and even proposes that the US Dept of Defense be audited like all other US Government Agencies are required to be. And they wonder why US citizens continue to give them (the US Congress) such an incredibly low approval rating?
Being a non-officer US Army veteran, and I think pretty financially experienced, I would come out of retirement to get the chance to audit the US Dept of Defense. Given the US Debt level, I can think of nothing that would be more patriotic. I am sure there are many enlisted veterans who would love to do likewise.
Turning my attention to another critical US economic problem, my hunch is that the average pay of full-time employees of all US businesses is probably about $45,000 per year. Thus, that above $18,199,000 Big US Defense Contractor top executives total compensation average is 404 times the $45,000 earned by the average US employee.
And the underemployed working three part-time jobs, totaling 2,000 hours for the year, and getting paid just above the minimum wage make about $20,000 per year. Thus, that above $18,199,000 Big US Defense Contractor top executive total compensation average is 910 times the $20,000 earned by that full-time underemployed worker.
And the many unfortunate unemployed for the full year get about $10,000 per year. Thus, that above $18,199,000 top executive total compensation average is 1,820 times the $10,000 of unemployed compensation of the average unemployed person who can't find a job.
It is pretty clear to me that the US has a serious problem with income inequality, and where the economic gap between the very wealthy and everyone else has continued to widely expand in each year since 2001.
Below here is the Total Compensation for each of these 51 Top Executives of Big US Dept of Defense Contractors in the most recent year disclosed:
| Total | ||
| Compensation | ||
| Big US Defense | Most Recent | |
| Company | Executive | Year |
| $000s | ||
| Accenture | Green | 16,105 |
| AT&T | Stephenson CEO | 22,018 |
| AT&T | Stankey | 11,460 |
| Boeing | McNerney CEO | 22,958 |
| Cardinal Health | Barrett CEO | 11,210 |
| Caterpillar | Oberhelman CEO | 16,902 |
| Chevron | Watson CEO | 24,727 |
| Chevron | Yarrington | 11,289 |
| Chevron | Kirkland | 16,513 |
| Chevron | Wirth | 11,379 |
| Computer Sciences | Laphen CEO | 20,859 |
| Dell | Dell CEO | 16,138 |
| Exxon Mobil | Tillerson CEO | 34,921 |
| Exxon Mobil | Humphreys | 18,486 |
| Exxon Mobil | Albers | 13,637 |
| Exxon Mobil | Dolan | 15,207 |
| Exxon Mobil | Pryor | 10,944 |
| Fedex | Smith CEO | 13,681 |
| General Dynamics | Johnson CEO | 16,058 |
| General Electric | Immelt CEO | 21,581 |
| General Electric | Rice | 20,579 |
| General Electric | Neal | 17,306 |
| General Electric | Sherin | 16,211 |
| General Electric | Krenicki | 14,550 |
| Harris Corp | Brown CEO | 14,266 |
| Harris Corp | Lance CEO | 13,924 |
| Health Net | Gellert CEO | 10,328 |
| Hewlett-Packard | Apotheker CEO | 30,413 |
| Hewlett-Packard | Whitman CEO | 16,519 |
| Hewlett-Packard | Lesjak | 11,005 |
| Hewlett-Packard | Bradley | 10,692 |
| Honeywell | Cote CEO | 37,843 |
| Honeywell | Anderson | 13,080 |
| Honeywell | Fradin | 11,824 |
| Humana | Broussard (Pres) | 10,532 |
| Huntington Ingalls Industries | Petters CEO | 12,908 |
| IBM | Palmisano CEO | 31,799 |
| Kraft Foods | Rosenfeld CEO | 21,945 |
| Lockheed Martin | Stevens CEO | 25,370 |
| McKesson | Hammergren CEO | 39,680 |
| McKesson | Julian | 18,816 |
| McKesson | Campbell | 11,383 |
| Navistar | Ustian CEO | 15,168 |
| Northrop Grumman | Bush CEO | 26,242 |
| Raytheon | Swanson CEO | 16,871 |
| Textron | Donnelly CEO | 11,519 |
| United Parcel Service | Davis CEO | 13,053 |
| United Technologies | Chenevert CEO | 27,671 |
| Valero Energy | Klesse CEO | 11,027 |
| Verizon | Seidenberg CEO | 26,455 |
| Verizon | McAdam CEO | 23,120 |
| Total all 51 | 928,172 | |
| Average | 18,199 |
