“If the government regulates the compensation of CEOs it is only fair that it regulate the compensation of actors singers, lawyers, athletes, doctors etc, and all damage awards. “
First of all, read it, I made that mistake too. McCain doesn’t want to regulate the amount, he wants the shareholders, the owners, to approve the amount. Why is that bad?
Secondly, this applies to public corporations only. If you’re a private company, and you don’t have any shareholders, you can do anything you please. Pay the CEO $1 billion a year, who cares?
McCain's plan tries to regulate the manner in which private(non government owned, publicly traded) corporations apply their rules of governance. I admit this is better than the democrat's plan to directly set levels of compensation, but that is a difference of degree, not of kind. Directors elected by the shareholders set compensation according to business conditions just like citizens elect representatives to enact laws without a direct vote by the people on each bill. If the politicians want to demand complete democracy for private sector employee pay, how about voting for all government employee pay levels as well? How about Medicaid recipients getting to vote on Doctor pay levels?
Like I said, we can do this either way but everybody deserves to be treated the same.