NOBODY is worth $1million+ per year; or do you disagree?

Celebs? No brainer. Eye candy/Ear candy. You figure SOMEBODY out there can act the SHIT out of Bruce Willis? You figure RIGHT, Skippy.

Athletes? All of the above, plus just damned stupid. They are PLAYING a GAME. THEY should go get a REAL JOB.

Corporate CEO's? You have got to be kidding. There was never a CEO in history worth what they pay those assholes.

Commodities/Stock/Etc. Traders? RIGHT. Let's get RICH by manipulating the price of something everyone needs or wants.

You know what? In a society where one child still goes hungry or thinks the dentist is someone you go to when you can't pull out your rotten teeth yourself or a doctor is what rich people go to when they're sick, I can't think of one single solitary sonofabitch I would agree deserves that much money for a salary. Not one.

Just sayin'.....

I'm not saying i deserve or worth $1.2 million but Merika doesn't like facts anyway, so give me my money :bounce::crazy::bounce:

There's a couple, both retired teachers in Canada, who build a MANSION about a mile from where my new house is. They saved their money, but when they quit, they were making a pretty fair pile: about $150,000CDN between them, and their pension is ENORMOUS.

Put National Health Care next to that, and it's pretty fair comp for a teacher...

AND TOP WORTH FOR THE BEST OF ALL THE CEO'S. Not starting pay, PEAK.

Same for police officers, fireman, etc. And the discrepancy in pay between teachers and sports figures/actors, etc. further illuminates where we, as Americans, place our highest value. All form and no substance. The people who do a real service to their community, and who oftentimes place their own lives at risk for us, are so far down on the food chain that they often have to take second jobs to support their families.

I have several friends who I went to law school with who are now working for the PD's office and are, due to their salaries, eligible for food stamps . . .

nurses, orderlies, the people who collect trash, cleaning crews, and more.

I would be happy if we could get back to the "CEO earns 40X what the non-supervisor employees earn in any given company." And certainly reign in the athlete and actor salaries.

They have the strongest union in this nation (besides professional athletes) for obvious reasons. When they go on strike ... EVERYBODY KNOWS.

They are my example when people talk about "jobs that nobody wants". No schoolchild writes an essay about how he wants to be a garbageman when he grows up. But there are often 3 year waiting lists to get these positions because their wages are THAT strong and job security is virtually guaranteed.

If planters paid pickers what garbagemen make, there wouldn't be ANY need for extra people.

If we stopped the easily exploited labor pools from entering, the wages of these so-called "undesirable jobs" would increase and suddenly you'd have teenagers on their summer vacations out in the fields picking just like you did 100 years ago.

Let's say that a regular joe worker can earn $40,000 per year. But this guy gets sick at the age of 30, with apendicitis. Without surgery, he will die. Moreover, if he dies, then he, his family and society will lose some $40,000 x 35 = $1,400,000 in goods and services that otherwise would have been produced, not to mention the emotional and psychological costs to his family.

Now imagine a surgeon saves this guy's life and he is able to lead a normal happy, productive life. That surgeon has contributed $1,400,000 in pure economic value to society, not including emotional and psychological well being.

Now imagine this surgeon does 5 appendectomies a day, four days a week for a year, plus other life saving surgeries.

I would say this guy is worth at least $1,000,000 per year. Sadly, he probably generates that much but pays $600,000 a year in malpractice insurance premiums, which is blown in bad investments by fat dumb lazy insurance company execs.

At McGill University in Montreal, a Canadian can go to Medical School at one of the top 10 in the WORLD, and it will cost about what 1 1/2 years will go for at the University of Michigan Med School.

GEE, Dad. How do they DO that?

The Malpractice insurance argument is BULLSHIT because it begs the question that it's necessary. It's just another way for rich Motherfuckers to PAY EACH OTHER. A Doctor MAY be an altruist of sorts, but it's the exception, not the rule.

My argument is based on value, not costs. What value does a surgeon contribute to society? It does not matter whether he went deep in debt to go to medical school or got a free ride -- the question is whether he is "worth" the $1 million per year. Or does he contribute that much to society. I think I have demonstrated that he does.

As for malpractice insurance, again, I just mentioned it to say that doctors make no where near what they contribute because of scams like insurance. I am not saying that the cost of malpractice justifies the doctor's salary.

So you haven't addressed the central question. Does this hypothetical doctor contribute so much to society that a salary of $1 million would be trivial compared to his contribution?


Added: My bias: I was diagnosed with a spinal cord anomaly a few years ago and was told I would gradually become paralyzed from the neck down. I had trouble walking and at some point had so little motor control in my right hand that I could no longer even write my name.

A very nice surgeon fixed me up just fine and cured me. And he does that several times a day. And yes, I would have paid him a shitload of my future earnings in order to be able to walk. So yes, from my perspective, I would say they earn their salaries.

It's his JOB. By your standard, the only plumber in 100 miles could charge whatever he wants for his work because he's the only game in town, or is overworked.

There are a lot of doctors out there: Haven't seen one worth a million yet. No offense, and my best friend is a doctor who'd agree with me.

The only plumber in 100 miles is not earning based on value -- it would be based on scarcity, and in fact, market failure. If there were three plumbers, then the salaries of plumbers would be basically the value they contribute to society.

I recently hired a plumber. I had to pay him about $1000 to replace drains and some other things in a bathroom. The materials cost only about $15.

I paid him for (1) his skill, (2) the benefit of not having to learn how to do this stuff and do it myself, and (3) the increase in value to my bathroom in terms of convenience and function was much greater than the cost I paid him.

My surgeon was one of several in NYC who do that procedure. I did not pay him because he was the only guy in town who could do the procedure.

In another post responding to the guy who told the story about the company earning $600 million, you said it could charge that much only if it was producing something we absolutely needed like polio vaccine.

Hellooo?? Earth to Tyler. Are you not typing on DU now? Are you not using the internet? A phone line?

These are all things that are not absolutely necessary like polio vaccine. If people collectively want to pay, say, $600 million to Dell for computers, why would you stop them?

And if some manager comes in and say makes changes so the price of computers drops so hundreds of thousands of poorer people can get them and their kids can get access to the internet for school, and this manager also makes the company more profitable, why would he not have contributed more than $1 million in value to society?

As a dedicated Neo-Socialist, I give economics about the same consideration that Bill Hicks gave to Marketing.

I can't ever agree with you, as I see exploitation in the allocation of your economics. Does some Janitor supporting a family have the same access to that back surgery as you did? THAT is what makes the "Market" wrong.

By the way, I am on a 56k modem at the moment, using a 350 mz K62 based desktop. And the phone line I'm using has been amortized for about 40 years now. Do you REALLY want to defend THE PHONE COMPANY?

On the "Earth to Tyler" bit: don't get snippy now. But you're still missing the point. Your $600 million to Dell is like defending the right to be an idiot or yell "fire" in a theater. Sure, you have the "Right" to behave that way, but is it the smart way to behave in the long term? If people can afford cars that get 6 miles/gallon, does that make it "Right" to produce them?

When you've sent $75 bucks to the horn of Africa to have a well dug so fewer children die of dysentery (as I did last month, even though I can't really afford it) then let's talk about the "RIGHT TO OBSCENE PROFITS AND WAGES."

It's just that you are jumping from point to point without actually adressing your own original question.

I'm not defending the phone company. But you said no one should be allowed to sell anything that is not absolutely necessary, like polio vaccine. Obviously you cannot mean that because you are using products right now that are not absolutely necessary. That isn't defending the phone company, it's asking you to explain the vast inconsistencies in what you are saying. Whatever the cost of the line to the phone company after amortization, the fact is you have chosen to have a phone and pay the bill. Are you saying you would prefer someone (the government?) to tell you that you cannot have a phone because it is not absolutely necessary like polio vaccine? Please explain.

Does a janitor have access to my surgeon? If he is a janitor working for the NYC Board of Ed, he does. There were all kinds of people in his office, including a guy who was obviously a manual worker. That issue is about universal health care coverage and financing, not about whether the doctor contributes many times his $1 million salary to society and his patients.

How on earth is selling or buying a Dell computer like screaming fire in a crowded theater or being an idiot? Are you using a computer right now? Are you saying that you are screaming fire in a crowded theater or are you saying you were an idiot for buying your computer? I honestly cannot understand what you are arguing.

I'm glad you sent $75 to Africa. I don't do that, but I work in poor countries in Africa and Asia so my contribution is more direct than that. But if I hadn't, would that mean that I couldn't question the illogic of your posts? And who was defending the right to "Obscene" profits?

I cannot make heads or tails of your posts.

As you are drawing small sections of what I have said to bolster your claim to what appears to be "Market Capitalism," I'm not going to respond to these items point by point. I feel I have made my claim if not my point. You write well, but you may want to re-read what I have written a little more carefully as your response is specious in your claim to non-understanding.

Perhaps you are trying to defend an inflated salary, or your right to make one in the future: I can't say. You don't want to see any of my connections, that is your right. I don't say it makes you right, but it is your privilege.

contribute, what do you say of countries with socialized medicine? Are they wrong? They pay doctors on salary, and its no where close to how our doctors are compensated. Are these doctors being used in your opinion? Do they not have a duty to uphold the Hippocratic Oath, regardless of their level of compensation?

because in general, I agree with certain kinds of price controls. Despite what you may think, I am not a free marketeer. The question was, whether anyone could be worth $1 million a year. The guy who prevented me from being a quadraplegic, I believe, ethically can claim that amount.

Whether we should let him or not, however, is a policy issue. It's for us as a democracy to decide. Because it is impossible to price life and health -- because a consumer cannot rationally forego lifesaving medical care -- there is a strong argument not to leave it purely to the market. Also there are all kinds of technical reasons to regulate the price.

So yes, an economic system can justify paying a doctor $1 million a year. Should that system do so? Probably not. Socialized medicine is an excellent idea, and most doctors I know would rather trade some of their salary for the privelege of giving up the burden of having to be a "businessman" as well as a healer, by taking a lower salary and not doing any administrative, marketing, and accounting work.

economics.

One thing is a numbers game. Suppose I type an essay, such as say, this post on DU. Suppose further that everyone who reads this essay pays me .001 dollars, or one tenth of a cent. Surely a half-way decent essay is worth one tenth of a cent to a reader. Well, if I get 100 million reader/customers a year, then my essay is worth one million dollars, right?

So, for your example of the appendectomy, you have played some similar games with math. For one thing, most people do not make $40,000 a year. For another thing, even if they did, their life is not thereby worth $1.4 million. If he had to pay that much for his life, he could not afford it because he is going to need other things too, such as 35 years of food, clothing, and utilities.

You took the sum of his salary and said that showed his value to society. Yet, if he is an American, there are some who would say he consumes more of the world's resources than he produces. What if the person with appendicitis, is, unbeknownst to anyone involved, the BTK killer or some other sociopath, like a guy who writes mean-spirited essays? The possibility exists that by saving his life, the doctor is making a negative contribution to the world.

Finally, the doctor is not Robinson Crusoe or Atlas. He cannot save those lives without his training, the help of nurses and other support staff (including a frigging janitor who cleans the operating room every day), buildings, scalpels, tables, sheets, gauze pads, plastic tubes and other items which are all manufactured and delivered by somebody else, and so on.

He is one cog in a system. As Tyler hinted at, he is a cog that can be replaced, and not necessarily more essential than any other. Let him try to save a life without gauze pads or anesthetic. What we do is reduce the supply of some specialists in order to transfer wealth. We restrict access to certain "important" positions which confer enormous power and wealth on some people. Such an arrangement is neither necessary nor socially beneficial.

First of all, I did not argue that a doctor who saves 5 people a day, who on average earn $40,000 a year should be paid the sum total of all earnings of all patients he has saved. If I had, I would argue the doctor should be paid $1 million; I would have argued that he should be paid $40,000 x 35 (worker's years) 5(operations per week) x 4(days per week) x 45 weeks. The answer would be $1.26 billion per year, rather than $1 million per year. I was trying to convey a scale of magnitude of the contribution.

So if the average worker, making 30-40 grand consumes almost as much resources as he produces, his net productivity is still impressive. Most people of modest means manage to leave estates in the range of $100,000 (I know it's hard to believe, but you are worth more dead than alive!). This still suggests that a doctor who saves so many people per year can easily justify a salary of $1 million per year.

I acknowledge the doctor is not Robinson Crusoe and is replaceable. That only supports my argument. Please see my response to Tyler's suggestion that my analysis is like rewarding the "only plumber" in town. The very fact that the doctor is replaceable shows that his salary is not based on monopoly or some other market failure, but on the actual contributions of value he makes to patients, their families and society.

As for the contributions of nurses, equipment, etc, this is accounted for assuming the doctor pays these expenses or includes them in the bill to the patient or insurance company.

Finally, you are correct that the AMA inflates medical salaries by restricting the supply of doctors. That is a form of market failure. But even under these artificial circumstances, because of the tremendous value of life, the AMA is trying to capture more of the value of the procedures, which otherwise accrues to patients, insurance companies and society. It is wrong, but it does not refute the idea that the doctor himself actually contributes so much value to society.

You cannot measure the net productivity of a person using the monetary value of his estate. Otherwise the cocaine dealer is leading a very productive life, unlike, say, Gandhi, who left only a bowl and a prayer book when he died. Not only that, but having worked side by side as a temp with people making twice my salary plus benefits, it was pretty clear that I was working harder than them and producing more value, although that was not reflected in my pay, and would not be reflected in my estate.

On the other hand, I have gone to a doctor, had them take my temp and blood pressure (or an aide did that), talk to them for ten minutes or so, and for that they want $100, almost half a week's take home pay, and the doctors only confirmed my on-line diagnosis of an ulcer, or in another case, my mom had to suggest anemia.

In other words, they over-value their own importance and knowledge. For an average doctor to actually save four lives per day, he would have to be positioned at a node of sorts where he had access to that many people who needed his specialized services, same with a CEO, who, as a chief, has a place at the top (another node). Being at a node gives one the power to divert revenue flow regardless of the value being produced.

And thanks from all the rest of us "Proles" out here, making CEO megasalaries possible.

I LOVE that comercial, by the way. Don't you?

typically a manager is going to save money by a) reducing wages and benefits, or b) reducing prices paid to suppliers, or c) reducing the amount "wasted" on safety and environmental regulations.

In many, many cases, he/she is not creating value, merely transferring value from workers to consumers or from local residents to consumers, with the manager and the company taking a nice slice in the process.

I am not saying that there can not be extraordinarily skilled and creative people who make huge contributions, but that a) very often the over-paid are not such people, and that b) the contribution of ordinary workers is undervalued and provides much of the wealth that flows to the over-paid.

The strange thing, to me, about the over-paid, is that they are already doing what they want to do. If I got paid as much as Steve Alford to do the job I do, I would do it for about one or two years and then retire and do what I wanted to do. I keep working my job because I need the money. They are not in that boat, but they keep working anyway. Which says to me that they would do it for alot less.

....he'd still be worth TENS of BILLLIONS!!!!:banghead:

Assuming he's worth $40 billion (that's 40,000,000,000 for the math-challenged), if you divide it by the number of people in this country, which is about 300 million (300,000,000), you end-up with $133 per person. That's hardly a couple of million!

he would have left over...
:crazy:

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

:-)

and redistribute their assets more equitably

surely a few of them can be salvaged.

We should have a maximum wage of $300K.

Yes, many people earn obscene salaries these days, not that $1MM is obscene. Some people are worth that kind of money.

I once worked at a large multi-national in NYC. This was a break-even business for decades. A new team came in and within three years they had turned the place around to where it was netting $60MM per year on $600MM in business. The guy who had the vision and the business acumen to do that wasn't paid nearly $1MM per year, but he was probably worth it considering what he did for them.

I think overall it leads to corporate greed, a huge sense of entitlement, and white collar crime.

What did they MAKE or PRODUCE that made it worth $600 million a year?

Unless your answer is something like Polio vaccine, I think you're missing the point, If I may POLITELY suggest.

Making that kind of money for raising profit margins is a circular argument, unless you're producing something that we can't do without. Don't get me wrong: an ACCEPTABLE profit margin/salary can't be argued with, but you're making the argument that some rich person would make when saying "Well, I'm not REALLY wealthy: I just get by."

And, if I may suggest politely, you miss the point.

First off - the guy who turned that company around was a major-league asshole. That didn't diminish his business abilities one iota.

Second - that major league asshole's abilities had the effect of creating hundreds of good-paying, full-time, fully benefited, vested, health-benefits, 401ks etc jobs for the majority of employees in the company. There was also room for part-timers who wanted it that way.

Third - this was during the early Clinton years (92-96) when the economy was humming. There wasn't a full timer that I knew who was making less than $35k a year. Part-timers were being paid $20-35 per hour depending on their skill level and the position they held. Most middle/upper management types were earning in the low six-figures, $120k-170k. Ie: the highest-paid employee was making about 5Xs the salary of the lowest rung. That's not obscene.

Fourth - I still think the guy who made all that happen was worth $1MM per year.

And before you get on your "unless he was finding a cure for polio" soapbox, may I relate a story?:

Near the end of my first year in music school, a music theory class evolved into a philosophical discussion of what music means in the world. Some of us saw it as indispensable. Others found that it was a luxury that didn't add much to the equation and paled when compared to the good works being done by humanitarians.

Then, our instructor chimed in. He related how he had visited his brother out in the farm belt. He watched as his brother got up every day at 3:30AM, worked his ass off until dusk, fell asleep at the dinner table and did the same thing all over again, seven days a week. After a few days of this, our instructor raised the same issue with his brother: his brother was doing hard, important work that fed hundreds of thousands. There were tangible benefits. Our instructor's career in music seemed so insignificant in comparison, his workload seemed as a vacation when compared to his brother's.

"It just doesn't seem like I'm really contributing," said our instructor. "What am I doing to improve the human condition? My life and career seems so privileged and useless."

"But, Walter," said his brother, "don't you realize that if I didn't have music I wouldn't be able to get up every morning and do what I do?"

We all have our place in the puzzle.

I could not possibly agree with you more as to the value of Music.

But seeing as the most of the top selling "artists" in the commercial recorded industry make yearly what would endow a major symphony orchestra for a decade, we aren't on the same page.

When I sit in Orchestra Hall listening to the DSO play "The Emperor" (Jarvii conducting, Axe soloist), the millions made and paid in your industry compared to the meager salaries of some of the minor orchestras makes me think the $1million your boy made might be better spent on 20 1st/2nt violins, or perhaps a cello section?

Just a thought.

orchestra, so I know what you're saying.

But what many people don't know is that even non-major orchestras are dependent on the generosity of the rich to survive. Our orchestra plays to near-sellout crowds, yet only 50% of our annual budget is generated through ticket revenues. Do we double ticket prices across the board (making our cheapest seat over $50), or look to make up the difference through fund raising?

The government provides for many types of gifting that allow the rich and super rich to donate money to arts/non-profits, taking tax breaks etc in the process. Yet even with all they could do, only 14% of the super rich in this country donate money to any charities. 86% keep 100% of it in their families.

It's the suits. Most artists get about 20k a year after all is said and done.

The war-for-profit industry? The fast-food industry? The whole foods industry?

Pick your industry - pick your corruption.

And even though I'm a sort of po-mo admirer, and open to many aesthetics, I'll tell you what "aesthetic" is not: Britney Spears, Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne (sp?), that Mayer asshole -- oh, that's right -- and just about everything else that's a top seller and rakes in billions of dollars, except for a very, very, very few.

I'd MAYBE say that a dude was worth $1 mil if he was gettng people to purchase Varese, Schoenberg or Satie -- but if he was getting a million so that millions of nine-year-old girls could aspire to be whores -- then, I'd say he's not worth it.

And even if it was the first case, it would still be hard for me to justify a $1 mil salary.

And yes - we sold classical music - about $60MM worth a year. That's the genre I was in charge of, BTW. But we would have never sold that much classical had not the major part of the biz been based on pop music. The $ generated by pop music sales allowed us to advertise classical music in market segments that we could never afford had we been limited to $ generated by classical. The issue of economy of scale was neatly sidestepped in this marketing arrangement.

BTW - the money generated by this biz allowed the company to help underwrite the Tokyo Quartet when they played all of Beethoven's string quartets at Carnegie Hall. To their credit, the company's major brass also bought out a few parterre boxes and provided free seats for the opening concert to anyone in the company who requested them. The money to underwrite that series would not have been there had it not been for the contributions of pop "dreck" like Ms Spears and Pootie Tang.

Sometimes, we're sustained by a nice steak au poivre. At other times, we hit McDonald's...

Ever since they sold Julius Erving in the 70's, the New Jersey Nets have been doormats of the NBA. They lost money every year, never made the playoffs, and had lots of empty seats.

Then they got Jason Kidd.

Soon they were in the NBA finals, were making tens of millions of dollars not just in ticket prices, but in merchandise and playoff shares. Since he's been there they've made the playoffs every year.

If the owner makes $ 20 million a year more because Kidd is there, is he worth his $ 10 million salary?

I'd say yes.

There is a world renowned surgeon in a major city in Texas.
His ads are all over television--for the service he provides which is a very popular procedure. He makes millions. His family lives in a very exclusive neighborhood in a multi-million dollar home.
He has a daughter who has a devastating disease. He and his wife put this baby in a nursing home when she was 2 and turned over care to the state so they wouldn't have to pay for her care. Now Medicaid takes over care for this child, when this family can well afford health insurance as well as private nurses for her.
Her care is expensive. She also is not given the luxury of spending her short little life on earth with people who love her and whom she can love. She has a very isolated existence.
I took care of this child while she was in the hospital having one of her numerous surgical procedures. There wasn't any family there when she had surgery to give her a kiss before she went in or after she came out. They had made her a DNR.
They did call from the south of France though later that day to give their love and kisses to their daughter.:puke:
It is these types of system abuses that literally make me sick.
The wealthy almost always play the system to their advantage.


On edit let me add that I understand that when you keep a neurologically devasted child at home, there usually comes a time when you do have to turn care over to an institution and that is acceptable. I have never seen it at age 2 however. A 2 year old doesn't require any special type of lifting or beds or equipment, etc. She just requires to be fed like any infant, loved like any child, and cared for and nurtured. This family had two "normal" kids and just didn't have time to tend to this child--it would screw up the family vacation--not to mention the perfect family portrait-- dontcha know?

The CBC had an interview with a multimillionaire a couple of weeks back who now only does things for profit so that he can make more money to give away.

It was on an article about the addictiveness of charity, and how sharing and caring release endorphins and dopamine if you do it enough, prolonging YOUR life while making it more pleasant for both you and your beneficiaries.

a "true philanthropist?"

A philanthropist isn't worth anything if he isn't worth anything. The wealth that funneled to him personally was - at some point - created with the sweat of others who weren't so well compensated. If it's old school money, than you can probably throw in thousands of wealth-creating deaths into the equation that got him his wealth.

than a million. These people are everywhere, but you won't find them in the paper. A few that I can think of are Ben & Jerry, how about Soros? CEO's who run corporations should not be getting the kind of money they do, that is obscene. If a CEO is getting more than 20 times his lowest paid employee, he's getting too much.

zalinda

The only reason we NEED the Ben and Jerry's of the world is because we still tolerate the existence of the Lay's and Skillings of the world and their far too numerous ilk.

You cite Ben & Jerry and George Soros as "good" millionaires based on their left-wing leanings and what they do with the millions they've amassed. The original poster seems to think that you should be judged on what you do for a living. So, Ben and Jerry aren't worth their millions because all they did was sell ice cream, which we can all make at home if we like. They didn't cure cancer, they didn't solve world hunger. How can they be worth millions?

Same with Soros, only worse. He made his billions betting on the currency markets. That's not a sum-zero game: his winnings amounted to some other investor's losses.

their millions. The difference is the gamble. When you own a company, you are entitled to earn your millions. When you are a CEO, you are gambling with other peoples money. When you gamble with your OWN company, you can go broke, when you gamble with other peoples money, you just move on to another company.

If you can't earn millions when you own your own company, then why make it grow? Why not just make it large enough to support yourself and family in style, and pay your employees minimum wage. Keep it small forever.

To say that no one is worth a million dollars is naive. The fact is, that some people are, they provide jobs so that others in their community can survive. It doesn't matter that they haven't cured cancer.

As far as Soros, it doesn't matter that he made his money betting on the market, he used his OWN money. He's not like "chainsaw" Al, who made his money destroying companies, mainly by firing people from their jobs.

To restrict the amount of money that people can earn seems pretty lame to me. Next thing you know, you'll tell me that only certain people deserve to have a job.

zalinda

your side.

And furthermore, these a-holes don't need nor deserve a tax break! Also Chimpy is waaay over paid!

...songs, and their album sells $10 million worth of CDs, do you think someone else deserves most of that money rather than the band who did most of the physical and intellectual labor and took the risk of not going into a more secure profession?

:silly: Certainly they deserve most of their profits. Perhaps I'm just disgusted with overpaid professional athletes, no talent overly- demanding movie "stars" as well as lazy Greedy CEOs who make 500% more then the grunts actually doing the work, and anyone else who makes an obscene amount of money for basically doing nothing especially noteworthy , but marketing themselves/BSing their way to the bank. And to top it all off, the fans and the grunts who have made it possible for them to "earn" their obscene salaries, are the very ones who are suffering because these GREED PIGGIES need that tax cut to pay for their summer home in the Hamptons or the Lear Jet or the Luxury vacation in the South of France. Pee U! That's just me. :shrug:

My problem isn't with success and talent and achievement, so long as what is rewarded is productive, hard, valuable work.

And giving people who work hard less of the money they're creating doesn't solve the problem. It does the opposite. It means more money for the people in the corporations who aren't doing the hard work that's creating wealth.

The people who benefit the most from this idea that nobody is worth a million dollars for their labor are the shareholders of corporations benefitting from the labor of the very talented because not paying people for their labor increases corporate profit margins.

Football team owners and Nike and Warner Bros benefit when people are hostile to the idea that nobody's labor is worth more than 1 million dollars.

It's a corrupt industry to begin with. One way to spell it is "payola".

I'm remembering what happened to many talented bands in the 1980s when making that comment.

the money in the record industry/

that for herself.

Well, of course it depends on who did the work that makes her famous. But generally, the people who do the hard work deserve the money.

The thing about CEOs getting millions of dollars is the question of who's really doing the hard work. If the CEO hasn't done much and is making bad decisions, and it's the people who work for the company who are making all the sacrifices, it should be the people who get some of the wealth the company is producing.

Some actress is worth what it would cost Habitat for Humanity to build 100-200 houses?

It's that kind of math that makes me think that the universe will be better off when the next asteroid smacks the planet and wipes us out.

goes once people have paid for her movie.

If your argument is that movie tickets should be cheaper, that's one thing.

But if people are willing to pay millions to buy a band's album or go see a movie, the question is really who should get most of the money the movie or album or invention makes.

If people are mostly going to see a movie because the actress is in it, she should get a big chunck of the profits.

I think it should be the people who do the labor -- the actress, technicians, directors, composers, performers, and the people in the back rooms at the companies calculating the grosses, etc. -- and if there are CEOs doing creative hard work, they should get a piece too.

(I should note that Keanu Reeves gave everyone who worked on the Matrix bonuses out of his own salary because he recognized that it was mostly their labor that made the movies good -- and that's the right thing to do.)

If your argument is that no actress is worth 1 million dollars or 10 million dollars of the millions she creates, who do you think should get it? The CEO of the company that distributed the movie? Should all go out in dividend income to shareholders?

If the CEO is the reason the actress is famous or if the shareholders's capital contribution was a risk that created the reward, maybe they do deserve the money. But, I do think that creative people who take risks deserve to be compensated when their work is great.

An actress, assuming the movie is good, employs a LOT of people. Theatre workers, toy salespeople, film crews, Blockbuster employees... all there because of actors and actresses.

Most actresses are liberals, so they donate some of their money to charity.

This theory you have that says no one should do anything but help the poor and produce absolutely-necessary articles is kinda strange.

That's the overpaid actress and the 100-200 houses.

BTW - you may be interested to know that the ex-head honcho at HfH (Fuller) has been accused of all kinds of nefarious deeds (including sexual harrassment) that would make most private-sector CEOs blush.

The average worker at an S&P500 company gets about 1/3rd of the operating profits they create. Plantation economics.

...making a large capital investment. The people who own the buildings and machinery should get their cut too. Labor benefits from the investment in capital.

The issue isn't whether you should get a portion of the wealth you produce. The issue is what that fair percentage would be. I think the % is definitely too low in the US today in most industries.

I can easily understand why such capital resources should be preserved and, when consumed, either be replaced or be compensated at cost. To do otherwise would be a "taking" - theft. What I don't understand is what moral and ethical principle says that ownership should PROFIT. I'm not talking owner-operator, where the labor of the owner is what's compensated - I'm talking about the value of that labor and its distribution.

A 'corporation' is a limited loss and limited liability entity - the owners harvest unlimited profits but limit losses. Under what theory of morality and ethics is the profit unlimited?

Everyone deserves fair compensation for their contribution. Isn't that the foundation of liberalism? Fairness and Equitability.

Bankruptcy laws are also a balance of interests. There are very good reasons why we don't hold honest people legally responsible for debts of their corporations when everyone has followed the law.

Without labor to use it as a tool, a hammer is just a hunk of wood attached to a hunk of metal. The intrinsic value is nil; it can't be eaten, worn, or used for shelter. Without a literate user, a personal computer is of no intrinsic value. The very value of any productive capital good is based on the mere existence of labor.

(This, of course, is why labor unions are very important, along with the blanket power to strike.)

"Everyone deserves fair compensation for their contribution." I agree. I'm not challenging compensation; I'm (literally) questioning the entitlement to profit above and beyond compensation.

and that is why I am a minimalist, and a libertarian. We could all easily save ourselves.

You can dig the dirt with your fingers. You can maybe get a loan, and buy some tools. But if you really want to maximize the value of your labor, it'd be great if you could go to a factory, or work somewhere where they own tractors and trucks and a big blast furnaces.

Do you think that all by yourself, you could get the money together to get that kind of infrastructure together to really turn your time and labor into money? What if someone who has a lot of money, but only the labor of one person decides to use that money to buy the machinery that allows labor to make their time and work more productive? It would be a good idea to take advantage of that arrangement, and the only way that will happen effectively is if the people with capital can get a fair return on their capital investment.

The people who own the facotry and the machines should get something. The only question is how much? You determine that price when you have a level playing field where capital doesn't take advantage of labor and where labor can't take advantage of capital.

Your last sentence doesn't make sense to me. Any compensation in excess of what you put in is profit. If capital spends 100,000 bucks on the machines that allow people to make things that can be sold for 200,000, they should probably get a little bit of that money so that they get more than their $100,000 back. If they don't, then they won't make the investment, and labor won't be worth so much.

All of life is letting someone else win a little every once in a while so that everyone wins much more collectively.

I ask what moral or ethical principles support the PROFIT an owner exacts from labor. I'm not questioning compensation. I'm questioning profits above and beyond the wear and tear and consumption of a productive resource. The only answer I'm hearing is the equivalent of "might makes right."

Let's imagine this another way. A factory is built by labor. Once other workers have then used it and, by their labor, paid back the 'compensation' given to the workers who built it, what justification exists for continuing to extract "vigorish" from those workers?

I guess most folks would agree that there's a question of how much of a percentage the owners of productive capital should take from the value of the labor above and beyond the cost of the capital used up, but I wonder how that question can even begin to be answered unless we understand the basis for it being greater than zero at all.

I sometimes think we're so accustomed to saying "of course" that we've never even figured out why.

You'd think I wouldn't have to make it any more obvious. But here we go. Again.

If someone helps you make more money that you could have otherwise by putting up capital and taking a big risk on you, how is it moral or ethical not to compensate them for their risk? How is that fair to other people who might also benefit from the capital investment made with your contribution to the profits of the capital investor?

With your hypothetical: if labor can make a factory with no capital investment, then there's no capital investor who should get a cut of the profit from the factory.

Think of it this way: you have a business idea and you go to angel investors becuase you don't have the capital to fully realize your idea. The angel investors put up capital. You start your business. Because of your labor magnified by the tools the capital investment helped you buy, you make millions. You would have made nothing otherwise.

Now you don't want to pay back the capital investors with interest? Because you think it would be immoral and unethical to do so? That's crazy. It was immoral and unethical to borrow capital from them with no intention of paying it back and the difference in the money you made thanks to their investment and the money you would have made if didn't get their capital is stolen money. If you don't want to give capital a percentage, then don't expect capital to invest in your labor, but don't pretend it's a question of morality or ethics when you don't want to pay back capital with interest in exchange for the risk taken on you to help you fully realize your goals.

and people of their ilk that create things that vastly improve the human experience are worth whatever the market will bear.

...deserve more that $1 million.

but given the way many jackasses drive in ground-based vehicles, I think the invention of a flying car would be a crime against humanity.

more than five years when they are at their peak. CEOs definitely not. They have a lifetime to work for their retirement like we do.

Money traders, well now we are in the realm of gambling. You can't stop this no matter what, however, it should be so regulated that all it is is gambling without safety nets in the end. Then everyone else should be able to share in the profits of the company they work for first.

It costs $1 to print and ship and I charge $2 for it.

And I manage to sell $2 million copies....what should I do with the extra million you don't think I am worth?

Now free enterprise is a different thing like gambling. You can't stop it, but you could tax it. So how much tax would you be willing to pay on your windfall, to give back to society so to speak? Let's say the taxes were used for something we could all agree with as liberals, like day care for poor working mothers.

I find arguments about what the tax rate to be akin to angels dancing on the head of a pin.

I mean, what should I say...29 percent? 33 percent?

The trouble with charity at home is that it isn't distributed equitably. This is where you need a bureaucracy like the government to spread it evenly. Even the good doctors at Harvard Medical School who represent the Physicians For a National Health Plan, after much study came to the conclusion that the government would be the only agency that could efficiently manage such a plan although they threw in every alternative way into the think tank process before they came to that conclusion because as they said, they really didn't trust government that much. However, everyone has to grudgingly concede that Medicare is run efficiently and cost effectively, in spite of all the meddling it suffers from politicians.

Reagan cut the top rates from 70% to 40%, it was then cut to 35% before Clinton raised it back to 39.7% and then Bush lowered it to 33%. What happened in the 1980s? CEO salaries sky-rocketted. Why? I think, in large part, because of the tax rates. They basically set their own salaries. Michael Eisner made $233 million one year.
Would any rational person want another million in salary if they knew the government was going to take $700,000 of it? Or another $100 million if the government was going to take $70 million of it?
I think higher marginal tax rates are the simplest way to curb CEO salaries and to leave more money for investors, consumers, workers, and the environment.

There were so many loopholes back then that most in the 70% bracket paid less taxes than those in the 20% bracket. Did you know you could write off all of your medical expenses then as well as the interest on your loans and credit cards? I think a straight 33% at the top rate with no tax rebates or write offs would collect more than the old 70% bracket, which looked bad on paper as well. It's like you hear that Europeans pay 50% of their wages for social programs, when the truth is that only a small percentage of top income earners actually pay 50% and the average wage earner pays about 20%.

They messed up during welfare reform. They turned these mothers over to companies that wanted to exploit them. At the same time, they defalted wages for people not receiving welfare.

What they SHOULD have done is required working for non-profits that need extra hands. That way the investment keeps on giving and the private sector doesn't get a "welfare boon".

But if I am hired by a company who can distribute the book to millions of people...I don't deserve the profit.

So according to this theory if Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson play one on one in the park and pass around the hat, they can make unlimited profits. But if they play for a team and generate millions for the owner....they deserve no more than $999,999.00 each.

know that today that isn't how it works. If the company who publishes your book has a very large overhead, I would assume they aren't seeing all that money in profits. Also, you are assuming you are going to make a huge amount of money from publishing the book yourself. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The publicity engine of a large publishing company is what sells the books. If you sell your book that well, it's really more of a stroke of good luck like gambling. I know many self-published authors who are sitting home with their houses stacked with unsold books.

The upside is that one of them had an established publisher pick up her on-line version of the book and published it in paperback. Now she has an agent (she must pay) and a publisher that gives her a cut of each sale. And, no she will have to write more books to gain the fame to become a millionaire author, which I doubt because her writing is definitely not mainstream.

....the heart surgeon who saved my father's life deserves every penny.

You went after actor & athletes? I figure you would side with labor on that since the owners and producers are the ones pocketing the real big bucks.

Isn't it a bit arrogant and presumptuous to make the statement "Nobody is worth $1 million+ per year"?

- What about $500,000?
- What about $100,000?
- What about $ 10,000?

Who are we to make a statement regarding another person's worth, be it monitary or otherwise? We pride ourselves in not judging others on the basis of nationality, gender, race, or preferences, yet we often grossly judge others on the basis of money. We, as a group, need to get past that.

and disagree, in part. The reason atheletes and actors earn millions is that the public pays more millions to watch them perform. Should the public do so? One can argue, but I'm not big on totalitarian societies that tell the public what they can and can't do. If people want to piss away their money...well, that's what a free society is about IMHO. Same goes for most businesses...if the public wants to buy expensive cars, then the guys who sell expensive cars make more money...

Where I think the problem lies is with PUBLIC wages; the free market economy assigns values to certain professions and those values can and do seem out of whack with what most people would say is important to society. In other words, most people if asked, would say that a schoolteacher or fireman or policeman is more important than Bruce Willis playacting as a school teacher or fireman or policeman. The problem is that the government is unwilling to pay teachers, etc. wages commensurate with their value to society. Of course, it ultimately does come back to the public, which doesn't want to pay more in taxes but also doesn't exercise any oversigh over the way the existing dollars are spent (so instead of tax dollars being used to raise teacher, fireman, etc pay, those dollars are spent on pork barrel projects, boondoggles for elected officials, unnecessary weapons programs, fancy offices for politicians who have forgotten that they are supposed to be serving the public, not the other way around.

onenote

be rewarded when we argue that we believe there's a limit on the value of labor?

I think for the sake of consistency that we believe that Michael Jordan deserved a pretty big piece of all the wealth he created for the NBA, the Bulls and Nike, since he was the one who worked so hard and made so many sacrifices to be so good. Certainly, a big reason Nike had so much money to make was because they were exploiting someone else's labor in Indonesia, but Jordan doesn't remedy that by refusing to take Nike's money (that would only mean Nike was exploiting Jordan's labor as well as the labor of Indonesia).

I agree with most of what you said. I think the biggest problem is the way the salaries for actors/sports figures, etc. have jumped in say the last 20+ years. Things are totally out of hand and there is absolutely no correlation between what they make and reality. Sure, they are making big bucks for their teams or movies, but the figures they're making don't make sense. And ticket prices for sports games and movies are also going up at a disproportionate rate. We, as the public, ultimately pay for those hefty increases in salaries, by supporting the event. And as our economy continues to tank, the disproportionate rate looks even worse under the economic microscope.

...of money in the past.

During the 20s, 30s and 40s, actors made MAD money. I forget the exact numbers, but Chaplin, Fairbanks, Rooney and Garland were making millions of dollars.

United Artists was a huge powerful corporation initially incorporated merely on the earned income of a couple actors.

Sports that have been popular over the last century have produced very high paid athletes even by today's standards.

at the top of my head and am too lazy to research it further, but I do remember it wasn't that long ago (within the last 10 years) when the cap on female actresses took an enormous leap to around $12 million per movie. But overall, I think I'm going to amend my response to the first post by saying that I don't have any control over what a CEO or doctor makes... but where I do have control, which is attending entertainment events like games, movies, concerts, etc., then I can voice my opinion on their overly-inflated income by not attending the events. And I will never agree that paying entertainment figures millions and millions of dollars for their talent and time is in direct proportion to reality. By doing so, we are making demi-Gods out of them and we are elevating them to a status that sets the standard on what we, as Americans, are viewed as placing value on. But that's just my opinion.

See post 52.

I say EVERY citizen in this country could be given $1 million by the government...a DROP IN THE BUCKET compared to what they spend on wars, and our country would be so much better off. What's $300 million to those people? They throw MILLIONS around like they're dollar bills. If every person in this country had 1 million to live on we would have NO poverty, NO hungry babies, NO ONE without healthcare, NO ONE without a home, ect.....WHY can't they do something like that? It sounds so simple. If we have BILLIONS to spend on wars, why couldn't our government take care of it's citizens that way?

I know, I'm dreaming. It will never happen. The rich repukes would NEVER stand for it. :(

$300 million divided by every citizen is one dollar per person, not $1 million per person.

To give every citizen $1 million would cost $300 trillion. I believe that is many times the gross national product of the planet over several years.

:spank: it sounded good though. ;) OK. How many FAMILIES in the country?

$1 million to each family?

Now we're talking reasonable prices -- only $100 trillion.

BTW, one way of thinking about the billions that the government throws around is the rule of thumb that there are 100 million taxpaying families.

Therefore, everytime they say a govt program costs $1 billion, that is $10 per family.

The $80 billion appropriation for the illegal, immoral war therefore is $800 per family.

Can you go out and blow $800 of your budget on something dumb? Can't do it? Well georgie did it for you.

Well said!

Oh - George did that for me too. He thinks of everything doesn't he.

That's way way way low. But why give the Bush's $1 million. Let's go with the 40 million poorest families.

40,000,000 * 1,000,000 = $40,000,000,000,000

$40 Trillion dollars.

You'd probably have to sell Africa to Neptune and rent Australia as a timeshare.

then lots of families would put their million dollars in tax free municipal bonds (assuming there were that many) and would quit their jobs and live off the $ 50,000 per year tax free dividends.

So, next time you went to the grocery store you would notice the shelves wouldn't be stocked since no one would work as a stocker in the middle of the night.

Also the garbage would pile up, the kids wouldn't get taught, and the mail wouldn't be delivered.

In fact probably more than half of all workers would quit their jobs and stay home and live off the interest on their million.

Now you could fight that by greatly raising everyone's salaries, but that would just raise prices too and the resultant inflation would soon wipe out the benefits of your $ 1 million anyway.

You'd have to, like, sell Asia to the Martians to fund that scheme.

I'd like to throw in the republicans as a bonus.

Bad, bad, bad math. :spank:

You're dreaming if you think you can dump a ton of money on everyone and make their lives better. How much do you think a candy bar will cost after that? What store will sell them for 50 cents? What store could pay a guy $7/hr to work there?

Give everyone a million dollars, and the price of everything will go up commensurately, meaning you won't have accomplished anything.

That's what would happen if you gave everyone a million dollars.

Happened in Germany in the '20's. People carting WHEELBARROWS full of marks around just to pay for simple things like a loaf of bread.

NOT a good idea.

Although, maybe not by any definition you may wish to go by.

Entertainment figures are paid as a measure of how much they can contribute to the total gross income of whatever employer (team, movie studio, record label, etc) hires them.

Liam Neeson headlining a movie is going to put more butts into seats as opposed to someone like William Macy or Don Cheadle being the lead actor. If Liam Neeson causes a movie to gross $50 million or whatever standard the studio wishes to apply then yes, I would say he deserves whatever the studio wishes to pay him whether that figure be $1 million or more.

Same principle with atheletes. If hiring one particular player increases team revenue by a certain value why shouldn't the player be paid according to the value he brought to the team?

Sorry, but in terms of ability, fewer people have the ability to be a superstar athelete or movie actor than a doctor, teacher or police officer and that specialization should be rewarded by higher pay.

I mean it's not a crime at all to be rich and to lead a comfortable life, but there's a limit and beyond that limit everything becomes weird. And it is very clear to see what millions do to people. It was them phony and stingy.

Inventors are the only people who really DO add millions of dollars of worth to the economy. It is their invaluable thoughts and ideas that has lead to the dramatic increase in living standards over the past two centuries.

Everyone else is just standing on the shoulders of giants.

who work for major corps get peanuts for their inventions (like a $1000 bonus), a joint patent if the company is gracious enough and a pat on the back. Think about guys like Ted Hoff (microprocessor inventor) who got next to nothing while whole industries were built on their inventions.

Do they bring in enough that their employer can afford to pay them a million? Is a million enough to keep them bringing in 100 million at Company "A" instead of at Company "B"?

Posts like this are why the word "liberal" scares the hell out of conservatives/moderates.

It's called capitalism. It is an incentive to produce. Why would anyone become a Dr, or a host of other high pressure jobs without an incentive?

The problem with the upper classes, is that many do not see that they have the most to lose if governement is not meeting social needs - and hence they should pay more taxes.

The rich also contribute the bulk of donations to charities. Should only the government be allowed to provide services for the poor, etc?

There were also posts that no "unnecesary" goods and services should be produced? Does that mean that my customers should not be able to purchase a vibrator? How about a movie? Yep, no entertainment for anyone, comrade. WTF?

We don't need to take away all incentive for people to make money in order to provide health care - we just need our leaders to start working for us instead of against us.

A person should become a doctor because that is the profession that they feel they would do the most good in.

I don't know if I agree with the OPs statement, I'd have to think about it more. But I know I'd rather have a doctor who took their job for the love of it rather than a doctor who took their job for the money.

keeping them in the business.

I mean, no matter how much you may enjoy being a doctor, the 80 hours/week of residency, the medical school debts, the nights on call for the rest of your life ... you're not going to keep doing that, even if you once loved it, unless you're well paid for it.

No comment other than that.

If Bush would resign as President and move out of this country, I'd be willing to contribute to $1million

worth the salary? For instance a movie star who draws a huge audience and make the studio money is obviously worth it to the studio because of the extra revenue the star will generate.

As a movie star/ athlete/ talent doctor etc are unique talents I can see how they would draw a high salary.

Now CEOs on the other hand.. well I just have a bit more trouble with that. Mainly because so many ideas come from lower levels of management that may have come out regardless of who was CEO. I think its fair to say you could outsource CEOs to via HB1 visas to India and probably have a pretty successful company.. Yeah I like that idea, instead of waxing 10 workers making 40k for Indian replacements how about one CEO for 50 million in savings.

Are you going to say that someone who invents a product that sells like hotcakes shouldn't make money off his own creation? Or the musician whose CD's sell a gazillion copies shouldn't see some return on his work? That's what keeps us all striving and dreaming -- that idea that we can make it big. And if the market backs up our worth, in terms of sales, then we have a right to those earnings. Now, if we are good human beings, we will donate a substantial portion back to the common good. But that is the earner's decision.

I don't begrudge Stephen King his earnings. If you're envious of him, then just go out and write your own damn novel.

:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

People like the kind you describe would do something else if they weren't making that kind of money. If a board of directors could pay a CEO less, they would. Obviously someone thought it worth it to pay someone that much. You seem to forget that people don't pay themselves; someone gives them that money.

I also don't think you understand stock or commodities markets. For one thing, commodities markets allow farmers and ranchers to get paid despite losses through things like mad cow disease and all that. And if there was someone in a market manipulating prices, someone else in that same market has incentive to bust them for it. And then buying and selling stocks is no different than buying and selling anything else of value.

Your capitalist pig centrist Democrat,
LoZoccolo

While I generally agree some people's work is worth $1 million, your example of CEOs is not a good one.

It is pretty universally accepted in the business press and academic business circles that something is seriously wrong with executive compensation, because executives are actually paying themselves. They dominate the compensation committees, and there is no outside review. Therefore, their pay has no relation to company performance, and many shareholders and institutional investors -- the people who actually pay them -- are furious.

I blame the incestuous relationships between CEO's and Boards of Trustees.

The Trustees are supposed to be watching out for the interests of the stockholders, but often they are not.

One problem is the tie in to politics.

You get a trustee who is a politician or former or temporarily former politician. He's going to give the CEO anything he can. He can't anger the CEO because next time he runs for something he'll need the corporate jet and the fundraising heft that the CEO will give him.

It's a great case of helping each other out, which is made even easier because they're each helping each other out with someone else's money.

The answer is to somehow make stockholders into greater decision makers on issues like pay. The problem is that the way the proxy statements are currently worded, you can't know what you're voting on unless you go to the shareholders' meeting.

Maybe that's why even Vietnam and China have realized that self-interest is a big motivator when it comes to productivity. If you start limiting how much people can earn, how hard do you think they're going to work? Don't we all have the right to dream big?

Unfortunately the human race is too greedy to ever have true Communism.

It should make us wonder just how enduring that system is.

<sorry posted in wrong place at first>

Before the freemarket progressives flame me, please look at my prior posts in this thread. I have generally defended the idea that some people's labor is worth $1 million, especially doctors.

But I also agree with the OP and others that athletes and entertainers salaries seem obscene.

Here is why: It is true that a famous actress may put millions of asses in theater seats thereby generating revenue, which must be divided between her, the studio, the investors and so on. Voluntary transactions cause people to pay to see her movie, so what's wrong with that?

The problem is that the media has become so powerful, pervasive and adept at psychological manipulation, that it is no longer clear that asses are going into seats "voluntarily."

Several decades ago, a lineman football player made about as much as a truck driver. Ticket prices were reasonable. Over those decades, a hyperactive media has glorified athletes into gladiators. They especially manipulate the perceptions of children. If you are raising children, you know what I mean. It is sad and pathetic and it is destroying the economy and culture.

Many young black and latino children have no clue that there is anyway of making a living other than being an athlete or entertainer. They idiolize these people like gods. They are not voluntary consumers, but victims of subliminal perception management.

Kids are convinced to purchase sneakers that cost $5 to make in Indonesia for $100 or more. An entire value system has been built up, with the connivance of advertisers, public relations experts, industrial psychologists, athletes, and entertainers that makes a child from a poor family feel even more deprived, unless the family sacrifices food or rent to buy these sneakers. True Michael Jordan puts asses in the Footlocker Store, but is this really at this point a voluntary capitalist transaction?

The fact that children kill each other over sneakers and designer jackets strongly suggests that the manipulation is so strong that the choices people make are no longer voluntary. A ghetto family that does not waste their resources on brand new $100 dollar sneakers every month or so invites severe bullying, even beating of their children, because of the value system built up by ruthless businessmen in the advertising, sports and rap music industries.

It is now possible to use pschological marketing manipulation to build up valueless expressions, such as those of "50 cent" as "music" by "artists," who do not sing, play instruments, read written music, or express any sentiments other than violent, criminal, obscene misogynistic fantansies. The simple, trivial act of throwing a ball through a hope has been mystified such that children crave the throwers name on their shoes, jackets, underwear and all other personal belongings.

At the same time, the truly meaningful contributions of value by doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists, factory workers, and others whose work can actually be measured, is sytematically denigrated and as a result, there have been multiple assaults on their wages.

So, no even using standard economics, which is based on voluntary rational transactions, it is possible to say that entertainers and athletes do not deserve their salaries.

strongly endorses what you are saying. We are sending the wrong message to our children and to the world.

And I get my earnings through royalties on book sales. So because people may want to buy my books, am I exploiting them? Are books just worthless commodities like sneakers? Is it just terrible that kids are actually ENCOURAGED (gasp!) to read? Is JK Rowling the same thing as a Nike executive?

I don't see why anything I said applies to you. Have advertising firms used subliminal perception to sell your books? Do you brainwash people to buy your books? Do kids shoot each other over your books? If not, then you are ethically entitled to what you earn.

and unless you're writing some severely innovative literature, and not some formulaic tripe that the masses call "literature," I'm quite sure that what I'm writing is wayyyyyyy cooler than what you're writing. So, why should you get a million dollars? I can look down on you, right?

The truth is, I wouldn't want a "million dollars" -- or, at least a million dollars a year. If someone offered me a million dollars that I could let sit in the bank or long-term bonds, and live my minimalist lifestyle off the interest, and occassionally give to charity and bankroll some literature projects, and give to political campaigns -- then, what the fuck do I care? Why the fuck do I need a million-dollar salary to be a writer? If I'm that caught up in needing money, I'm probably writing straight-ass crap.

I'd like to hear how you write such important lit that you deserve to be a millionaire. Please, enlighten me.

What I was decrying in my posts was the society that makes $1million a year not only possible, but the only desirable course of ambition.

Also, I was putting forth (in my own obscure way) the proposition that society should not make earning $1m+/year the MOTIVATION for art, athletics, medical acheivment, etcetera.

I'll take agreement where I can get it!

Then again, no 2 bedroom house should be worth $5 million just because it has a view of the Pacific...

Anyone who can't get by on a mllion a year needs some financial management lessons.

I can't imagine it actually improving one's lifestyle tremendously to earn ten million rather than five million per year.

But people get silly about these things. They're making ten million dollars a year, and they're desperate for a tax cut, because current tax laws leave them with only 6.5 million. Poor dears. Unless the tax cuts are kept in place, they'll have to go eat at the rescue mission, right?

Years ago, I read an interview with a British pop star (I forget which one) who was asked why he didn't become a "tax refugee" as so many other British celebrities were doing at the time. "Why?" he asked. "Even paying U.K. taxes, I have enough to buy anything I could ever want."

Everyone is infinitely valuable, and no amount of money will ever begin
to weigh the value of a human being. Money is an economic flow, and
some folks really do offer great economic value. Many have sold their
souls and thier lives to do so, so why hate or envy them. Do YOU want
to be a fat out of shape executive flying 400,000 miles per year under
stress to keep up quarterly profits?

Stephen Jobs earned his bux along with the entrepreneurs who formed
hewlett packard, tandem computers, sun microsystems and so many wealth
creating agencies, that REALLY have created great wealth. If someone
is willing to pay you a cool mil for your work, then who am i to care,
as surely its your business and not mine.

Rather what i hear in this is the ugly wealth-hating socialist tone of
the USSR that did not respect private property, rather simply taking
whatever the politically powerful wanted from private citizens, and
using the violations of property rights to break people. It smacks of
envy and greed to be so anti-wealth. Its only money, and you are
already worth 100 millions of dollars. If you don't want to be so
economically solvent, then you arn't, and that is free will, so what
is the problem with free will, that people must get their noses out
of joint by other people's economic choices.

Indeed, our society has cheated generations now by pumping money in to
a giant army for the empire, and millions are cheated of healthcare
and decent social services. But the high earners are not the problem
in all this... no, they simply, much like martial artists, have
mastered a certain skill of breaking 10 bricks with the bare hands.
Why tear people down, rather build people up... its so much more
politically powerful.

is that it's about more than having stuff. It's about political and social power. For that reason alone it should be restricted. It's a metaphor for the anthropoid ape social structure.

Envy. Seems like the first thing that comes to the mind of those that make that argument. Not my problem, we live well on a combined 5 figure income. I can't see why others feel they need so much more.

Most wealth is unearned and should be shared out more equitably with those who do the actual work. Merit should be rewarded but our system is crazy wrong.

That "most" wealth is unearned, still leaves that some of it "IS" earned.
I congratulate a football player who can get enough money in their short
career to keep them in food and clothes 60 years after they last step
on a field.

But how do we make sure that wealth is shared equitably, and that the
"kapitalists" do not take the lions share as rent for their capital?
In this regard, i would recommend a 20 to 1 ratio of earnings within an
economic entity, that the boss can make max 20 times the grunts. Then
when the boss is making a million, the "grunts" are making 50,000... and
hey, that is more fair.

I think the issue is rather the economic distribution problem, not so
much that one set is wealthy, but that the boss:grunt ratio has become
absurd in our bushian distopia to several hundred to 1, that the boss
can make a cool mil and the office cleaner paid under the table at
4 dollars an hour.

That wealth is allowed to influence politics has been the case for ages
of man, as certainly the wealthy perceive that they have more skin in
the game, given the republican focus that the state exists to ensure
property, pretty much as the sole purpose. Your postuation is
noble, but then it is more in keeping with the french revolution and
marxism, that a society equally enfranchise the poor.. something yet
to come to america... and something that was likely to have occurred
had FDR not come up with the new deal.... and similarly as they
dismantle the new deal, we should support them, as it will lead to
a badly needed french revolution, a beheading, and a system that
truly enfranchises all people.

You can tell a lot about this society and what they value when you see who makes the big bucks and who makes next to nothing.

Teachers, Social Workers, Nurses (people who work with the weakest membbers of society) make crap in most areas of the U.S. and Entertainers, Athletes Traders/Brokers, CEO's (people who work with money or who "entertain" the people with disposable income) make the big money.

This society values money and the wealthy. The elderly, children and the ill can go jump in a lake.

but in general- people are worth whatever someone is willing to pay them- so i would have to say i disagree with the statement.

a large number of them make over that amount. This can not all be associated with market power and collusion.

Seems to me much of their work is invaluable.

However, I would agree with you on the premise no one needs that much money really, because it promotes such an imbalance of power and wealth.

The saying "too much of anything is not healthy" is a valid one.

Paris Hilton or the Osbourne kids don't deserve to be paid millions of dollars to do their reality show but if someone sees it as profitable to pay them that, so be it.
Someone like Angelina Jolie who has talent and also does work as a Goodwill Ambassador, and also gives over 50% of her salary to charity work, might deserve it.

If a person gets a Masters degree I think they deserve a darn good salary after all that hard work to get there, not to mention the oustanding student loans they might have.

And just reallocate all that money that comes from the top CEO's and raise the min wage so the people making min wage can actually eat and drive their cars.

Still interested.

If you've got a better system, please propose it and I will guarantee you a Nobel Prize.

But I would bet your system would have someone (like you) arbitrarily setting everyone's wages based on how you (and you alone) value their contributions.

Then they are. It's that simple.

The market for how people are compensated is not free, and it is distinctly less so for very many of the best compensated people. There is no mystery in this. Controlling markets is how income is bid up. It's no surprise that doctors, for example, through their lobyying arm, keep the supply of doctors low enough to keep doctor's compensation as high as they can. There are endless parallel examples. Our task as citizens is to free the markets to work by regulating how they can be unfairly influenced.

Capitalism is a serious game. Lots of people cheat. Good refs make the game fair. We don't have that yet.

It isn't right at all. But we live in an incentive-driven society where people are taught to be more productive with increase in prize. It is sad.

Don't want Michael Jordan or Paris Hilton making millions? Stop contributing to their businesses by watching TV or going to games. As soon as you convince the rest of the country, they will stop getting the big bucks they do.

Tyler, I am amazed that you can bring up an economic discussion with so little knowledge on the actual functions and workings of an economy and then admit that you have no interest in it.

No one would ever want the job of a CEO (who frequently has to go to a top rated UNiversity which IS NOT easy to get into) or a Doctor (who has incredible student loans, has an 80 hour work week during residency, and has to pass 5-6 6 hour exams) when they can get the same thing working as a beauracratic teacher which may or may not know what the hell he/she is talking about and only has to get average grades throughout her life.

is posting in this thread.

Do you realize there are people dying of starvation right now? Yet, you sit there in your comfortable chair, typing blissfully away on a computer that probably cost you the equivalent of feeding an African village for a month. In fact, your upperclass electronic device is probably worth more than what the average Iraqi makes in a year. How callow can you be? Who's the heartless, self-centered capitalist now?

We ought to all sell our computers and donate that money to needy causes. But, no. We're used to our creature comforts...and that's not the solution anyway. Though I might consider it if I was a millionaire and could buy a replacement computer...

:)

We're not talking about greed here, we're talking about someone's worth, something which cannot be defined by anyone objectively. In simple terms, someone's worth is defined by their ability to negotiate it, otherwise it is just arbitrary.

If one has the whatever it is that he/she can enable your employer to pay you one million, and they make say 1.5 million, then you are by definition worth it.

Unless of course you think this person should be paid say $100k, and the corporation pocket the 1.4 million.


The ultimate reality is that you are worth what you can negotiate.

If they have a viable commodity that commands those numbers then so be it. The problem arises when you have a company that lays off 3500 people so stockholders can show an annual increase in their portfoliio or a CEO can get a 5 million dollar raise. At least in movies when a star makes $20 mil a flick you're not necessarily killing other jobs for it. The movie is still going to require a certain number of technical workers. I don't think there should be a limit on how much someone can make just a limit on the number of other lives he affects adversely to make it.

You want us to all live in a communist society.

What about artists, authors and inventors who have all made themselves filthy rich from their craft? What about lottery winners who were once poor? Are they greedy evil people?

If we "CAP" everyone's salary, to say 100K, why would anyone try to do anything worth doing?

This type of discussion is what makes liberal a bad word.

I wouldn't say this is the dumbest thread I have seen on this site but many people in this thread would be better off taking an Economics 101 course at their local community college. What the author of this thread is doing is the equivalent of me making a thread that states: "I hate literature" and then stating that I neither read, understand, nor am interested in literature. I cannot see how anyone can make that kind of judgement without first and foremost learning everything they can about it.

would make it all work.

Communist man works not for his own gain, but for the benefit of society.

In college 30 years ago, it actually sounded realistic, but that's when the USSR looked real strong and so on...

Until Communist Man arrives, we'll probably have to stick to our old capitalist system.

I don't buy the argument that money is a prerequisite for anybody wanting to do anything. If you don't like socialism, that's fine.

The simple fact of the matter is that you directly or indirectly benefit from socialism whether you like it or not. Try and live life without social programs such as Social Security or the public education system. Those are forms of socialism where people have pooled their resources together for the common good where everyone has a stake. They are non-profit institutions that were established to serve the people, not to make a profit. This is not the case in for-profit institutions where ownership is usually limited to a few people and where the decisions made may or may not reflect the interests of the population at large.

What about artists, authors, and inventors who never got rich yet continued doing what they do? Jesus never got rich. Was Jimi Hendrix playing for the money? Or was he playing for the soul?

I don't want mediocre artists who are just in it to make money. I want singers who got soul, and I don't care if they end up dying in their own pool of puke. At least they put their fucking heart in the words they sang.

Fortunately I am neither.

"...filthy rich..." is just that: FILTHY. And anyone who can justify being FILTHY RICH while we live in this society with its glaring inequities is a POLTROON. Look it up.

Ok, income isn't entirely irrelevant, especially at the lower end of the scale.

On the other end of the scale however, income is practically irrelevant. Did you know Steve Job's salary is one dollar per year? He can afford to not care about income.
Imagine being able to spend a million dollars every year - for a thousand years. Without ever working.
Ridiculous? Billionaires are in exactly that position.

There are a few hundred individuals on earth who aren't merely rich - between them they own half of all the planet's wealth.
Most of the rest of us is either starving to death or struggling to make ends meet.

This huge difference in 'financial Independence' has nothing to do with differences in intelligence, inventiveness or willingness to work. There are differences, but not that large.
It has everything to do with the fact that the more wealthy and powerful you get, the easier it becomes to become still more wealthy and powerful, that and lack of morality.

Then I'd say "sure, make as much $$$ as you can!"

Let me add one more point in favor of the rich: throughout history they have patronized the arts making possible humankind's greatest achievements. No revolution has ever succeeded without support of some in the upper classes.

Capitalism merely exploits man's basest drives whereas socialism requires a higher degree of altruism than mankind as whole is currently capable.

Furthermore, I'd like to state that capitalism is not perfect, nor is it moral, but at the moment it's the best we've come up with that works and provides a reasonably good standard of living for most people.

I say lets even the playing field by getting behind the fair tax plan...The poor sure could use some help and the rich and middle class will have to pay in equal amounts in accordance with their lifestyles as will all of these illegal aliens.

I have a friend who is a liberal professor that is mulling over this idea and yes she has some questions, but is starting to really like the plan.

Republicans really don’t like the idea because they can hide from the current tax codes with vast resources available. We can’t. We need to do some things that even out the playing field and God knows we need a message to gain the trust back in America.

but rather how much an individuals time is worth. In our society people are born equal but that does not hold true through out an individuals life. The time of somone who has a masters degree in business and a ton of expierence working in oh say J.P. Morgan is worth more because they possess a unique and expensive skill set few others have. A simple high school graduate may have admirable qualities to them but it is very unlikely they possess a skill that is unique enough to set them aside from the general rabble.

Whether you actually deserve such a salary is completely irrelevant. A highly educated and expierenced individual in a field requiring a large amount of raw intelligence is a rarer commoditity to society than your average working joe. His skills are in high demand and he is among the few with such skills therefore companies or customers will pay that individual significantly more than a regular worker because they would be in such need of his skills. An hour of his life and effort is worth more because he can do what many others cannot.

Celebs, their usually in the top .5% of good looking people who had climbed, slept, backstabbed their way to the top of show business. There are only a couple handfuls of them, they are famous. Their time and attention is worth a lot.

Athletes: Sports are popular in the USA, a few individuals have essentially mastered them. The general public loves to watch the sports played by the best of best. Their are millions that watch these sports on TV, or pay big bucks to see them in the stadium. These athletes unique skill set makes their time worth more than your average working joe.

Corporate CEO's: Knowing your way around a huge company and making it function to generate a profit can be incredibly complicated. VERY few people have the skills to do this so once again their life energy is worth a lot.

The quality of that childs life maybe low, but that top .1% of the population will never know that child, or know people that know that child so that childs existance and well being doesn't really matter to them know does it as it has zero effect on them.

Yea I know the whole salary situation is pretty ridiculous, I'm not justifying it, just explaining how it is.

when I say that anyone making more than $1mill a year should be taxed 100% on anything over 1mil. Actually I bealve they should be taxed 100% on much less than that but I'm being generous. If you are making that much money then you are stealing it from someone else.

If there is a limit to my reward, there would be a limit to my efforts.

As far as I can tell, they weren't exactly doing it for the money, yet their contributions helped to change the world.

There is not necessarily a correlation between effort and reward. Some people do it to learn about the world. Others do it for the love of doing it. Still others are driven by things such as principle or the need to help others. It's not all about money.

I would be more interested in wathcing some movies I've been neglecting and drinking beer.

Besides, I never said you were as virtuous as those two, nevermind as virtuous as someone like Jesus or Gandhi. I merely stated that there are other forms of reward besides money. Happiness, knowledge, or security derived from something such as mutual cooperation with others are some examples of a form of payment as well.

I've always wondered why they pay athletes so fucking much money just to have fun. So much for being "paid for how useful" your job is to society.

I always thought they have the hardest job.