Inequality Has Soared During The Pandemic—And So Has C.E.O. Compensation [newyorker.com]

By James Lardner, The New Yorker, July 30, 2021

What would it take to arouse a sense of financial restraint among America’s top corporate executives and the people who set their pay? More than a global pandemic, it turns out.

The C.E.O. of the cruise-ship operator Carnival Corporation, Arnold Donald, got $5.2 million in retention and performance-based stock awards last year, lifting his total 2020 compensation to an estimated $13.3 million—nearly twenty per cent more than his 2019 total. His company, at the time, was running up ten billion dollars in losses for the year and earning a place of prominence in two streams of undesirable media coverage. One emphasized Carnival’s tally of infected passengers and crew, which eventually exceeded fifteen hundred and led to dozens of known deaths. (Cruise ships were described as “floating petri dishes” in more than a few accounts.) Another focussed on the hundreds of Carnival employees who had been fired or furloughed, some while still at sea, making their plight the starting point for a discussion of the industry’s low salaries (typically ranging from five hundred and fifty to two thousand dollars a month) and onerous work conditions.

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