Tulsa, Oklahoma-Based Oil & Gas Co The Williams Companies Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase Was a Blistering 23.4% Per Year During the Past Five Years

I have researched and made posts related to Top-Tier Executive Total Annual Compensation, a SEC-required disclosure in Company Proxy Statements, in most of the largest companies headquartered in the four earliest 2020 Democratic Primary States ..... Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Also of the 14 Super Tuesday US States holding their 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries on March 3, 2020, I made like posts related to most of the largest Companies in the following US States ..... California, Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina, Minnesota, Tennessee, Vermont and Maine.

So now I will be researching and making posts related to Top-Tier Executive Total Compensation of most of the largest Oklahoma Companies, another Super Tuesday US State.

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 percentage increases in pay and employee benefits, mostly stock equity compensation, 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, this would be just a mere drop in the bucket as compared to the fact that 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 this huge pay inequality problem also exists widely in the non-profit sector including in non-profit hospitals.  And it also exists widely in state and local governments, especially in public education.

My research has shown that Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Tom Steyer are all spot on when they assert that US Corporate Financial Corruption is rampant.  But the problem is that none of the three of them have any clue on precisely the cause or how to effectively fix this huge problem which is the primary cause of the huge, continuing US income inequality expansion which has been occurring for decades.  They don't understand precisely the mechanics of how large US Corps have expanded income inequality so dramatically in each year for decades.  You can't fix something you don't sufficiently understand.  It's insufficient to just grouchily complain about it all of the time without offering effective solutions. 

There is only one Democratic Presidential candidate who has both the requisite financial acumen and economic fairness to turn the tide around on this massive, continuing US income inequality expansion ..... Pete Buttigieg.  

Frankly, Joe Biden is devoid of financial acumen.  Biden is a very nice man, but he is so naive on economic issues that he isn't even aware of the extent of this continuing huge US income inequality expansion or precisely its cause which has been occurring under his nose for the past forty plus years.

Nor is Biden aware of, or else has decided to ignore, just how huge the largest US tax shelters are which are located right under his nose in his home State of Delaware, mostly in one Wilmington, Delaware building.  These Delaware tax shelters have substantially added to US income inequality each year.

Amy Klobuchar has very little financial acumen.  Similar to the way Republicans think, Amy successfully pushed strongly for tax breaks for the many Medical Companies in Minnesota but that has substantially expanded income inequality with no trickle down economic benefit to the middle and lower economic classes. 

Also on the very negative side, both Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar voted for many years for the Annual Income Tax Loophole Extenders which dramatically increased US income inequality expansion each year.  On the positive side, voting for many years against these same Annual Income Tax Loophole Extenders were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

If you want four more years of huge US pay income inequality expansion like we have had in the past forty years, then Joe Biden is your man.

I think Joe Biden would have a very difficult time beating Donald Trump.  With his advanced age, Biden has a very low energy level, whereas Trump, with his unbelievably high energy level, reminds me of the energizer bunny.  US citizens want an energetic US President.  Barack Obama clearly had it.  Joe Biden at his advanced age clearly doesn't.   

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still both saddled with their pure Medicare For All positions which, because of its incredibly prohibitive cost and of its removal of existing health care coverage that many people really like, is highly unpopular to US general election Presidential voters at large.  

And Bernie and Elizabeth still don't know how large the ten-year cost of their Medicare For All will be.  Some outside pundits estimate the cost will run to in excess of $30 trillion over ten years, which will compound to in excess of $80 trillion over twenty years.  If so, there will be a US stock market crash, coupled with at best a deep US recession and maybe even a US depression.  And there will be no money available to pay a dime of social security benefits to the elderly.  Suffice it to say that neither Bernie nor Elizabeth are financial whizzes. 

If either of them won the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary, they would have a very difficult time beating Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential general election. 

A very recent Jan 20-23, 2020 NY Times/Siena College poll of Iowa general election voters in the 2020 US Presidential general election showed that despite the fact that Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Iowa by nearly 10% in 2016, Iowa is clearly in play in 2020 if Pete Buttigieg is the candidate against Trump ..... Trump 45% to Pete's 44%.  On the other hand, if the candidate is Bernie Sanders, Trump wins by 6% ..... Trump 48% to Bernie's 42%.         

I do think that Elizabeth Warren, with her consistently likable, charismatic, positive posture and fire in her belly, would stand a substantially better chance of beating Trump than Bernie would.  

I voted for Bernie in the 2016 Democratic Presidential primary but there are much better candidates to choose from in 2020 than in 2016 and also I feel that at his advanced age, Bernie now comes across too frequently as a grumpy old white guy.  Further, the bulk of the US general election Presidential voters think that Bernie believes in Socialism more than he does US Capitalism.  

On the other hand, Warren says she favors US capitalism but that it needs to work much fairer for the middle and lower US economic classes. 

I will be doing this research mostly by stock market capitalization and will now be addressing large Oklahoma Oil & Gas Companies and thus the second Oklahoma Oil & Gas Company that I am addressing here is The Williams Companies.

From annual compensation information contained in Proxy Statement filings with the US SEC, the chart at the very bottom below shows The Williams Companies Inc's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of the two consecutive substantially full years of employment for the past five years.

The Williams Companies Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase was a blistering 23.4% per year during the past five years.

So who is causing these extremely high Top-Tier Executives annual pay percentages increases, which tend to be much higher than the Companies' actual annual financial performance?

And who is causing the annual minuscule raises for the company non-executive employees? 

Generally it works like this.

The Company's Board of Directors set the pay standards for the total compensation of the CEO for each year.   

  

Then the CEO establishes the pay standards for the Top-Tier Executives, which is reviewed by the Company's Board of Directors.  

And the CEO also usually approves the overall pay and employee benefits annual percentage increases for each of the other levels of the Company's employees.

So who is this huge, continuing Company pay and employee benefit income inequality "on"?

Clearly it's "on" the Company's CEO and the Company's Board of Directors.

It's simple math.  The lower the annual percentage raise for the Company's non-executive employees, the higher the Company's annual profits and thus also the higher the annual percentage raise for the Company's executives since their annual pay raise is usually tied by formula to Company profits.

The end result is massive, continuing income inequality expansion.

And the only way it will be fixed is by wisely-designed US Government tax legislation, which gives companies very nice tax incentives for paying non-executive employees very well in a given year and which also requires companies to pay a luxury tax when executives are paid clearly too much in a given year or when non-executive employees are clearly paid too little in a given year.  In addition, it would be very helpful to dramatically increase the US Earned Income Tax Credit.

So, why hasn't it been fixed? 

Because more than half of the US Congress, including surprisingly more than a few Democrats, are effectively controlled by the US Corps or because the US President is controlled by the US Corps who are vigorously fighting to be at the top of the list of US Corps continuing to expand income inequality.

So how do you solve that problem?

Vote for US Senators, US House members and a US President who aren't controlled by the US Corps which view their non-executive employees and contract workers as Costs rather than as People ..... they all don't, but a clear majority of them do.

	FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE		FYE	FYE
	Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec		Dec	Dec
The Williams Companies Inc	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
Armstrong CEO	10,691	10,620		10,620	10,127		10,127	6,957		6,957	11,605		11,605	5,724
Dunn COO	N/A	N/A
Zamarin	N/A	N/A
Chandler CFO	N/A	N/A
Scheel	2,557	4,142		4,142	2,743		2,743	1,884		1,884	3,296		3,296	1,696
Chappel Former CFO				7,612	3,906		3,906	2,894		2,894	6,396		6,396	2,921
Miller Former SVP				N/A	N/A		2,860	2,004		2,004	3,728		3,728	1,706
Purgason Former SVP				N/A	N/A		2,039	2,815
Seldenrust							3,266	2,457
Totals	13,248	14,762		22,374	16,776		24,941	19,011		13,739	25,025		25,025	12,047
Annual % Change vs Prior Year	-10.3%			33.4%			31.2%			-45.1%			107.7%
5 Year Average Per Year % Change		23.4%