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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why does anyone deserve to make $19MM per year?? [/quote]

No one needs that much money.[/quote]

Who are you to say what anyone needs?  And no one DESERVES any amount of money.  We WORK for it.  Are you people bellyaching probably work about 1/10th as much as your CEOs do. [/quote]

You don’t understand the point. No one here is saying harder, smarter whatever should not earn more money. Sure, they deserve it! Now, 400 times more money? It’s immoral. If your CEO makes 400 times what you do, that means that he makes the same amount, in a single day, that you do in two years.

And this isn’t just one day. Every day he makes the same as his workers do, in two years of labor. Now… what I want to know is… what could a person possibly do, in a day, that is as valuable as what any other, working person does in two years? Is he saving lives? Creating world peace? Discovering perpetual motion? No. In most cases, he’s putting in between 8 and 16 hours of meetings and flights around the country, business calls and emails. Keeping things moving. And is that important? Of course! Thousands of jobs may depend on him, as well as essential products that need to be made available to his customers. If he screws up, it could have a serious impact. Absolutely that’s important.

But… if he makes the same amount, in a day, that you make, in two years, then he makes the same amount, in two years, that you make your entire working life. Think about that. Think about 40 years of paychecks, groceries, gas in your car, a mortgage, car payments, your kid’s college tuitions, dinners out with your wife, vacations, techno toys, pets, prom dresses and cleaning supplies… an entire lifetime of a reasonable, normal, average family’s income and outgo, in two short years.

Now… let’s assume our CEO wasn’t born that way, and it took him a few years to get to his exalted place. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that he’s only making 400 what you are for the last twenty years of his career. So… in that twenty years, he makes ten times what you do, in your entire life. Plus, of course, his hedge funds, his shares in the company, his golden parachute, and, of course, the fact that he pays 1/10th the income tax you do.

That’s a LOT of money. That’s not “a nice, well-earned life.” That’s not a Park Avenue apartment and a house in the Hamptons and a yacht. That’s more money than he could ever spend in his entire life, and more money than his kids could spend and their kids could spend… At a certain point, the accumulation of wealth becomes something beyond… ambitious, or even selfish. Because once you have all the material things you could possibly ever want, accumulating more wealth doesn’t even benefit you. It becomes completely meaningless.

And, when 45 million of your fellow countrymen are at or below the poverty level, when schools and social safety nets are being cut, when the middle class is paying ten times the taxes you are, and there’s still not enough to go around… it seems to me like a kind of insanity. And… treason, to be blunt. The 1% of Americans are destroying the American economy, and the country is being damaged by it.[/quote]

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