Las Vegas, Nevada Natural Gas Utility Company Southwest Gas Holdings Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Pay Raise Was an Exceptionally Clean, Blistering 27.8% Per Year During the Past Five Years

After the second Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate debate held in Detroit where Cory Booker was the standout performer, where several other non-top-tier candidates performed exceptionally well especially Steve Bullock and where most of the top-tier candidates stumbled, I now will turn my attention to the early primary States and I already have finished Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina Companies so now I have moved on to Nevada Companies.

The key issue to Nevada citizens should be the huge and continuing Income Inequality Expansion which is at the core of many critical problems the US faces.

Thus I will be doing research and making posts on the average pay raise per year that the Top-Tier Executives of Nevada Companies were rewarded with in the past five to ten years.

The 13th Nevada Company I am addressing here is Southwest Gas Holdings Inc.  

From annual compensation information contained in Company Proxy Statement filings with the SEC, the chart at the bottom below shows Southwest Gas Holdings Inc's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of two consecutive full years of employment for the past five years. 

Southwest Gas Holdings Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Pay Raise was an exceptionally clean, blistering 27.8% per year for the last five years, which is the 5th highest of the 13 large Nevada Companies that I have addressed so far.

1. Eldorado Resorts +58.5% per year for the past six years
2. Caesars Entertainment +38.8% per year for the past five years
3. Allegiant Travel +38.0% per year for the past ten years
4. Pinnacle Entertainment +30.0% per year for nine years
5. Southwest Gas Holdings +27.8% per year for the past five years
6. Las Vegas Sands +24.7% per year for the past ten years
7. MGM Resorts +18.0% per year for the past ten years
8. Wynn Resorts +17.3% per year for the past five years
9. Tropicana Entertainment +16.4% per year for five yeats
10. Red Rock Resorts +12.3% per year for the past six years
11. Boyd Gaming +10.6% per year for the past ten year 
12. MGM Growth Properties +9.5% per year for the past two years
13. Scientific Games +6.8% per year for the past ten years

The only highly effective US Government law enacted by either party in the past decade that has substantially reduced income inequality expansion is Obamacare and the political right is continually trying to repeal and replace it and three of the top four Democratic Presidential candidates now leading in the polls are effectively running as their principal issue to do in essence precisely the same thing ..... repeal and replace Obamacare ..... but to do it with either a pure or a version of Medicare For All.  The pure Medicare For All advocated by both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and which was co-sponsored in a US Senate bill by Kamala Harris is off-the-charts enormously expensive and would take up an enormous amount of wasted time with no positive result since it has no chance of getting passed legislatively.  The US Government CBO hasn't been able to score the cost of a pure version of Medicare For All so far because the proposals have not been nearly specific enough.  If and when they are specific enough, the CBO scoring will make people shake in their boots and wonder just how any Presidential candidate could propose something so fiscally preposterous.  Just given their near-sighted stance on a pure version of Medicare For All, if the Democratic nominee is any of the three of them, it will be extremely difficult for any of them to beat Trump in the general election.  It is that simple. 

My objective is to get a better handle on just why the US and particularly here Nevada has such massive continuing Income Inequality Expansion ..... it appears to be predominantly about the relative long-term annual pay raise percentages for the executives of a Company vs the many non-executive employees of a Company, coupled with the stock price appreciation subsequent to the time the company executives were rewarded in their pay with stock equity compensation.

To fix Income Inequality driven mainly by Company and its Board of Director choices on Percentage Annual Pay Raises, the US Government should step in and pass wisely-designed, simple but effective Fair Pay Raise Income Inequality Narrowing Company tax incentives for rewarding non-executive employees with fair pay increases ..... the carrot ..... and Company tax disincentives for rewarding executive employees with clearly excessively high pay increases ..... the stick.  I am certain ..... it is simple math ..... that this tax proposal would be very effective in substantially reducing the huge income inequality expansion that has occurred for decades in annual percentage pay raises between company executives and the rest of the company employees. 

And the continuing annual net tax revenues raised by the US Government here should be set up in a separate fund to be used only for wise additional income inequality narrowing initiatives.  This fund should be run by an outside group made up entirely of minorities harmed the most by Income Inequality Expansion of the past decades  .....all women, all blacks, all Latinos, all other non-white people, all past and present union members, all LGBTQ, all non-employee contract workers and all middle and lower income people of all ages, including those retired.

Also, the US Government should require all US Corporate Boards to include at least one worker representative and to exclude any Company Executive.

	FYE	FYE			FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE
	Dec	Dec			Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec
Southwest Gas Holdings	2018	2017			2017	2016		2016	2015		2015	2014		2014	2013
Top-Tier	Total	Total			Total	Total		Total	Total		Total	Total		Total	Total
Executive	Comp	Comp			Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp		Comp	Comp
	$ 000s	$ 000s			$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s		$ 000s	$ 000s
John Hester CEO	4,096	6,562			6,562	3,786		3,786	2,446		2,446	1,996		1,996	878
Gregory Peterson CFO	N/A	N/A
Paul Daily CEO Centuri Construction	1,746	1,467			N/A	N/A
Karen Haller Chief Legal Officer	1,160	1,977			1,977	1,337		1,337	967		967	1,210		1,210	610
Eric DeBonis SVP Operations SW Gas Corp	848	1,561			1,561	825		825	790		790	1,185		1,185	665
Roy Centrella CFO Retired	N/A	N/A			2,037	1,372		1,372	1,068		1,068	1,540		1,540	983
Anita Romero SVP Staff Ops and Technology								938	900		900	1,076		N/A	N/A
William Moody EVP								N/A	N/A		1,411	1,579		1,579	758
Jeffrey Shaw Retired CFO											N/A	N/A		4,980	2,879
Edward Janov SVP Corp Development														1,198	704
Totals	7,850	11,567			12,137	7,320		8,258	6,171		7,582	8,586		13,688	7,477
Annual % Change vs Prior Year	-32.1%				65.8%			33.8%			-11.7%			83.1%
5 Year Average Per Year % Change		27.8%