Southwest Airlines CEO cuts his base pay

This is a company that I use on a frequent basis given its strong ties to Arizona. I am pleased to see that the CEO understands that being greedy and taking the most money you can from your work is not always in the best interests of the company or the shareholders. Even though he makes relatively little compared to other airline CEOs, his stance on executive pay is admirable. The airline industry has been hard hit by the economy and even Southwest is not immune to losses. We do not want the airline industry to end up in a situation where we have to bailout them out to keep flights moving around the country because we just cannot afford to do so. Steps like Southwest is making are things that other companies should be looking at and employing themselves because it is unrealistic for a CEO to be making millions of dollars when their companies are losing money and seeing negative growth. Had wall street firms like Merrill Lynch learned this lesson, we probably would not be in the condition that we are in. Being more fiscally responsible is definitely something that we need to be encouraging not only our businesses, but also our government itself because wastefulness will end up costing us in the long run.