Dynata Survey Results: Which American Dream are We All Having?

During the onset of COVID19 Bill had been impressed with some CEOs who cut their own salaries in order to avoid furloughing so many of their employees However he also noted that CEO salaries tend to be a smaller part of CEO compensation the bonuses and stock buybacks being the larger share Of course to the general public these CEO moves might have generated considerable good will toward the brands involved For example a Dynata survey this past summer found that 43 of Americans said they would be more loyal to a brand whose senior executives were forgoing a portion of their salary to save jobs during the pandemicThinking of these various things Bill suggested adding a question to in Billamp8217s words the brilliant ongoing survey work Steven has always done The question was amp8220Please tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statement Large business CEOs deserve the large salaries and bonuses they receiveamp8221 Steven added this question to a recent omnibus study that fielded September 2628 with a sample of 2100 registered voters The margin of error was about 21Only 76 of Americans completely agreed with the idea that big business CEOs deserve their compensation Women were less likely to completely agree 48 than men 102 Perhaps the men feel that the dream of someday making it into that charmed circle themselves is more likely than women do given the gender disparity that exists in leadership among large companiesAlmost a third of the population is on the fence In this era of strong feelings and divisive politics it appears that CEO compensation may not be one of the larger sources of friction While certainly more American voters disagree 466 than agree 229 with this statement as an issue it may have faded into the background of what is making people mad There are too many other things to choose from apparentlyA plurality of the voters disagree with the practices of rewarding CEOs as much as is customary nowadays That is logical given that the average American nowadays is working harder and longer hours than ever before with health education and living costs eating up most of their incomeThe numbers are of course not flat across the population The more money a person now makes the more likely he or she is to agree that CEOs should receive such largesse Adding together the respondents who completely and somewhat agree they hover around 1921 of the under 75K per annum groups 2425 of the 75K149999 groups 30 of the 150K199999 group 44 of the 200K249999 group and 59 of the 250K group As one gets closer to the prize itself one agrees with it moreThose who approve of QAnon 95 of the sample differ the most from the total population on this question While only 76 of the population completely agrees with CEO compensation as it now is among the proQAnon segment that sentiment roughly tripled to 206 and comparing all of the agreeers the norm was 229 and the proQAnon group 517 Only QAnon and 250K groups show a majority agreeing with current CEO compensation out of about 90 breakout groups reported in the studyTwo groups one would superficially expect to differ a lot on any question people who say they will be voting for TrumpPence or for BidenHarris do disagree a bit on this question The total disagreers with current CEO compensation was a slight majority of the BidenHarris voters 545 while it was 391 of the TrumpPence segmentSo what is the central tendency among Americans They appear to be somewhat against the perceived excess but not howling mad about it There appear to be more fiery issues to be concerned about Would companies benefit in terms of market share by publicizing a more egalitarian view of each individualamp8217s contribution ProbablyWould stockholders benefit from a more even distribution of wealth among operating personnel and a more longterm view than the current quarterly focus Probably Surveys can give ideas but only experiments can determine actual outcomes of those ideasExpecting to see large differences separating along party lines the data do support the expected differences but with less difference than we thought we would seeMaybe thatamp8217s a good signClick the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Dynata Survey Results: Which American Dream are We All Having?

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Bill Harvey

Steven Millman

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Dynata Survey Results: Which American Dream are We All Having?

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Bill Harvey

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