According to a new WSJ survey of executive pay here in the US of A, Hooverville capital of the Western Hemisphere, CEOs of some of the world's biggest companies are being underappreciated, when it comes to the height and breadth of the pile of doubloons they are awarded at the conclusion of the fiscal year.

We had this big recession, see, and everyone took a big old haircut, even the CEOs. Very relatively speaking! Haha. Anyhow in 2010 things got better and all the CEOs got a nice pay bump. But last year? VIRTUAL ARMAGEDDON: "Despite fairly significant gains in companies' profit and revenue, total direct compensation for 65 CEOs in place at least two years rose just 1.4% last year."

Sure, you can attribute it to tougher SEC standards, or shareholder outrage over decades of gilded-age abuse in which cozy boards of directors awarded their CEO pals vast, undeserved sums which amounted to a short-term plundering of corporations doomed to crumble in the long run. But let's attribute it to something else instead: Haters. Libtard haters probably. Who don't understand the value of a good day's work.

"The median compensation for CEOs in the preliminary survey was $9.4 million," says another sentence in this news story.

[WSJ. Photo: Miran Rijavec/ Flickr]