Customer Reviews

The Cost of Talent: How Executives And Professionals Are Paid And How It Affects America

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While I bought this book some time ago, I just got around to reading it. A fan of Bok, you must wonder about why he wrote this book and why the publisher published it. Must have been "star struck". Talks about why lawyers make more than others and makes judgements about who is more valuable than who. Of course college professors and teachers come out on top--why not janitors and iron workers? I hauled this book around on several plane trips and was wishing I would lose it in the seat pocket.

This is a guy people would have listened to. He could have built an interesting and important model about executive pay and been instrumental in influencing how organizations value to top talent they have. The book needed a severe editing job. It shows that people you expect a lot from just don't come through consistently.

This book delves into a very critical aspect of current American society; namely, the exorbitant salaries of America's executives and high-level professionals, and the growing disparity between them and the rest of the people, especially the most underprivileged members of society. Although the findings cited in the book might suffer from methodological shortcomings, they are justified and confirmed by any person's observations of modern America. For instance, many of our corporate executives and lawyers own $1,000 suits, $60,000 cars, and have kids in private schools (not to mention enjoy $100 lunches on a daily basis) while there are countless homeless and welfare ridden persons who have very little mobility, regardless of work-ethic. There are clearly unjust differences in the amount of wealth and resources available to the most privileged members of American society and the poorest ones (also becoming known as the "under class"). This book is a valuable resource for anyone concerned with crucial societal issues that face the US in the years to come.