City of Chicago, IL Headquartered Real Estate Investment Trust Ventas Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase Was a Blistering 23.4% Per Year During the Past Five Years. That's 4.7 Times What Chicago Public School Teachers Are Requesting.

The fourth Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate debate was held on October 15, 2019 at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, a Columbus suburb.  It was good to see a significant improvement in the quality and relevance of the questions asked by the hosts, particularly the major focus on the key economic issues.  

Nearly all of the 12 candidates performed well but two of them stuck out as exceptional ..... Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar ..... who both substantially stepped up their insightful assertiveness.  

Amy gave the single most relevant phrase when she asserted that so much of what Elizabeth Warren is proposing are "Pipe Dreams" and have no chance of getting enacted.  Independents and even reasonable Republicans, who both will be deciding the 2020 Presidential general election, have zero interest in these fiscally irresponsible "Pipe Dreams". 

It's good to see that Unions are now stepping up all over the US in order to obtain a better deal for their union members.  All Democratic Presidential candidates are on the side of unions in their talking points.  But by far the most effective in actually getting excellent outcomes for union members will be the financially-savvy, extremely bright Pete Buttigieg, who is also very gifted in the negotiating process. 

There have been many US Government laws enacted in the past two decades that have substantially increased income inequality expansion including the year after year after year of annual furtive tax extenders of predominately special interests additional tax loopholes, which both the Democratic and Republican Establishments voted for under the radar screen every year just before calendar year end, but nothing was even close to being more income inequality expanding than the Trump Tax Cuts Act.

On the other hand, the only highly effective US Government law enacted by either party in the past two decades that has substantially reduced income inequality expansion is Obamacare.

My objective is to get a better handle on just why the US and particularly here Chicago has such massive continuing Income Inequality Expansion ..... it appears to be predominantly about the relative long-term annual pay and employee benefits percentage increases 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.

So far in my research of large US Corps I have shown that their Top-Tier Executives have been rewarded continually with just enormous annual increases in pay and employee benefits, mostly stock equity compensation, even to the extent that the key issue to US citizens should be the huge and continuing Income Inequality Expansion which is at the core of many critical problems the US faces.

While increasing the US federal minimum wage will help here, there is a much broader and critical problem that needs to be solved.  The annual percentage increase in the pay and employee benefits of Company non-executive employees are minuscule in relation to that of Company executive employees and this has been going on for decades.  When Corporate CEOs and CFOs primarily view non-executive employees as Costs rather than as People, this is what happens.  And neither political party has had the courage to take on US Corps here.

But it's not just in the private sector.  There are also large differences in the annual percentage raises of pay and employee benefits of executives and non-executives in the non-profit sector, including hospitals.

And it's also in state and local government entities.

If I were the mayor of Chicago, the first thing I would do is to revisit the past annual percentage raises of all City of Chicago executives, including public school administrators, and City non-executives, including public school teachers.  Such analysis could well yield a fair way to close the present annual percentage pay increase gap between where city public school teachers are and where the mayor of Chicago is.  I can think of no City employee who should be getting a higher percentage annual raise than public school teachers ..... they will determine the future of the City of Chicago more than anyone.    

With the current Chicago Public School Teachers strike, I will now be doing research and making posts on the annual pay and employee benefits percentage increases that the Top-Tier Executives of the largest City of Chicago Headquartered Companies were rewarded with in the past five to ten years in order to give a better understanding of the enormous gap between the annual percentage pay and employee benefits increases of these Top-Tier Executives of these Chicago Companies and of what Chicago public school teachers have been getting in the past and what they are now requesting.  

I will be doing this research by largest stock market capitalization and thus the seventh Chicago Company I am addressing here is Real Estate Investment Trust Ventas Inc.

From annual compensation information contained in Company Proxy Statement filings with the US SEC, the chart below shows Ventas Inc's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of two consecutive full years of employment for the past five years.
  
Ventas Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase was a blistering 23.4% per year during the past five years.

	FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE
	Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec
Ventas	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
Cafaro Chair and CEO	13,116	25,255		25,255	9,666		9,666	10,924		10,924	10,066		10,066	9,960
Probst CFO	4,996	8,604		8,604	3,337		3,337	2,351		N/A	N/A
Cobb Chief Investment Officer	4,990	8,359		8,359	3,101		3,101	4,061
Riney General Counsel	3,962	7,121		7,121	3,007		3,007	3,019		3,019	2,620		2,620	2,645
Bulgarelli EVP, Office	N/A	N/A
Lillibridge EVP Medical Propoerty Operations				5,304	2,414		2,414	2,426		2,426	2,355		2,355	2,200
Schweinhart Former CFO													4,063	2,478
Lewis President													3,900	4,591
Totals	27,064	49,339		54,643	21,525		21,525	22,781		16,369	15,041		23,004	21,874
Annual % Change vs Prior Year	-45.1%			153.9%			-5.5%			8.8%			5.2%
5 Year Average Per Year % Change		23.4%