We mentioned envy in the headline of another editorial today about people with large incomes, although we don’t envy them when they have to pay lots in taxes.
But there surely will be some envy as a result of a recent news story about Leslie Moonves, chief executive officer of CBS.
You may remember his name because of its unusual nature. And you may remember him because he was in the news recently when it was announced his pay for 2011 reportedly hit $68.4 million.
You may wonder, for example, what somebody might have done to earn that amount of money. Well, Mr. Moonves apparently has done a lot.
CBS stock rose an astounding 42 percent just last year.
That was up from $19.05 to $27.14 per share.
Surely, anyone and everyone who has bought and owned stock in CBS appreciated that gain. And most of them probably won’t begrudge Mr. Moonves his pay for whatever he did to help raise the value of their stock.
Mr. Moonves, who is 62, got most of his income boost from stock options.
Why has CBS stock risen so much?
Mr. Moonves reportedly has been a big help in generating more revenue for CBS from sources other than from broadcast advertising.
For example, it’s reported he sold some older TV shows for online distribution on Netflix and Amazon. He also got new fees from cable and satellite TV companies for the right to carry their shows on CBS TV stations.
Those things, of course, were recognized and reflected in salary, bonuses, deferred compensation, stock options, etc.
Altogether, those things earned Mr. Moonves a good raise of 20 percent, it was reported.
When we see such figures, most of us really don’t understand them. But we shouldn’t envy the beneficiaries. It’s better to congratulate them — and look around to see if we can learn anyting in our free enterprise system about more opportunities for everyone.
But a word of caution: Everything doesn’t always go up.
It was reported that Philippe Dauman of Viacom Inc., who led all chief executive officers with $84.5 million in income last year, had a different outcome than Mr. Moonves in his compensation. His pay fell to only $43 million. That’s still a lot of money, but represents quite a cut in pay.
Still, most people won’t exactly feel sorry for Mr. Dauman because of his declining income.
But whatever happened, didn’t just happen in either case.
While most of us don’t know the details or understand high finance, we should recognize that someone,” and in some cases “several someones,” did the right things that produced more revenue, benefited lots of people, and thus earned the executives more income.
Isn’t it better for us to congratulate them than to envy them? In sports, with which we are all familiar, don’t we congratulate the winners?
Most of us appreciate success much more than we do failure, so it makes sense to congratulate those who succeed in business try to learn from them at the same time.