Columbus: Steven Clifford on “The CEO Pay Machine”

Join Book Culture and Harper’s Magazine on Tuesday, May 9th at 7pm for a discussion of The CEO Pay Machine with the author, Steven Clifford. He will be in conversation with Harper’s president, Rick MacArthur.

The former top CEO examines the scandalous and corrupt reasons behind obscene pay packages for corporate executives–and explains how this hurts all of us–and how we can stop it.

Today, the pay gap between chief executive officers of major U.S. firms and their workers is higher than ever before–depending on the method of calculation, CEOs get paid between 300 and 700 times more than the average worker. Such outsized pay is a relatively recent phenomenon, but despite all the outrage, few detractors truly understand the numerous factors that have contributed to the dizzying upward spiral in CEO compensation.

Steven Clifford served as CEO for King Broadcasting Company for five years and National Mobile Television for nine years. He has been a director of thirteen companies and has chaired the compensation committee for both public and private companies. He holds a BA from Columbia University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

John R. (Rick) MacArthur is President and Publisher of Harper’s Magazine and an award-winning journalist and author. Under his leadership, the magazine has received 18 National Magazine Awards, the industry’s highest recognition. In 2008, MacArthur published his third book, You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. He writes a monthly column for the Providence Journal and, in French, for Le Devoir (Montreal) on a wide range of topics, from politics to culture.