We Are No Different.

An item or service is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. The same is true of wage slaves.

The country is outraged by corporate greed and the incredible amounts of money made by CEOs and other high corporate officers. I am astounded too, but I am more astounded by the fact that people cannot understand why it happens.

Take Lebron James, if you know nothing about basketball, then the tens of millions that he makes are ridiculous. If, however, you do know basketball, then you already know the reason; he is the best and everyone wants him. The pay is competitive.

As for those who would argue that CEOs from companies that fail should have their pay confiscated, would they make the same argument for Kevin Garnett's stint in Minnesota? He was a constant MVP candidate and even won it one round and he made top dollar, but his team was still consistently at the bottom. Does a team failure mean that the star should never have been paid?

None of us could do the things that a CEO does. They have to be brilliant and charismatic, masters of grand scale business stratagem and relationships; they have to be creative, calm, and in control in exceedingly high stress environs; they have to be exceptional in a passel of areas where we wouldn't know where to begin and they have to keep it up for between 70-80 hours a week. You could not do what a CEO does anymore than you could do what Lebron James does; the same goes for me.

The board of directors of a company are always people with a firm vested interest in the company's success; they choose CEOs who they believe will increase the worth of their stock. And please, tell me, when was the last time you heard of a star player telling a team owner "no, don't pay me tens of millions of dollars, I don't really need that much."

Would you say no if someone offered you 20 million a year? Don't lie to me, and don't lie to yourself. We'd all take it, and we are really just jealous that we aren't the ones who get the offers.

Comments

  1. And actually, huge chunks of CEOs' compensation is generally tied to their performance in the form of stock options. They're thus held more accountable for results than athletes are.

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