It's called Capitalism. You get paid your market value.
We can all say capitalism is unjust, but even the poorest people in the US would not be as rich as they are without it.
Not true. U.S. workers are getting progressively "poorer" and the disparity between the working class and the elite continues to expand. From Kiplinger:
"Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, its just not the average American worker."
I'll say that capitalism is the most efficient way to bring wealth to the economy and it's up to individuals to decide what they will do with it to make the world a more just place.
Capitalism is a very efficient way to bring great wealth to a small, elite group of people who control the corporate and political structure in this country.
Simple supply and demand determines the relative value of executive pay. Apple would certainly pay less if it could--they're not idiots. But for now, the cost of retaining their current team intact is steep, but they're willing to pay it.
When you say "Apple", you refer to those who control the company and determine compensation. These are people who are in the "club", the 1%, the elite, whatever you want to call them. The Board of Directors are wildly rich themselves. The "system" is well entrenched. The elite take care of their kind. They certainly would NOT pay less. Their intent is to harvest as much money as possible for their cohorts.
When people use the term "redistribution of wealth", that generally connotes an INVOLUNTARY redistribution. Who is doing the redistributing as you've used the term? And what is being "redistributed"?
Resources, output, wealth. When a worker labors to build something, that labor produces a product or service that is then sold at a profit. He trades his labor for a wage. Someone other than the worker then reaps the majority of the benefit (money) from that labor. When I referred to redistribution, it was my intent to convey that.
Second, I can never understand why people always have to hate on people who make good. The liberal lie is always "that anyone who makes or has a certain amount of money( and it always seems to change,...is it a million is it 500k, is it 200k,) must have gotten it on the backs of others, probably stepped on their necks on the way, or some other ill-gotten way."
It's not a question of people "making good" or being productive and successful. It's a question of what constitutes an appropriate reward for that success. Why $100M per year? Why not $1B per year? $10B per year? Where does it stop? Do you think that if corporate execs could get all the non-executive workers to work for $20K per year and pay themselves $1B per year that they would do it? Would you then say, "Well, it's a free market, you choose to work for $20K per year - don't hate on those who are more successful" ?
.....do you hear the OWSers complaining that a movie star makes 20,000 times the sound editor?
I'm going to think this one over. My first reaction is that it's a bit different than corporate compensation. The movie star is effectively freelance and works for the studio just like the sound editor. I would say my argument holds against a studio head. The movie star is paid based upon what the corporation values their service at (i.e. how much box office they can expect by having that name on the marquee). The movie star is not a "business" in the sense that they don't use other people's labor to make their "product" - they just sell themselves.
--
Finally, I appreciate reading everyone's opinions. I don't want to personally criticize your perceptions. I think that our culture has indoctrinated most of the populace in this concept of the "American Dream" - work hard and persevere, and with talent and determination, you too can be rich. Without something like that to believe in, how could the people be kept under control and made to trudge to work every day? They look forward to finally being able to get that new car or paying off that credit card or taking that vacation. Personally, I think it is a sad deception.
Let me leave you with one last thought:
What if we continued to compensate the "high performing" executives very well, say $1M per year (a substantial sum to most people), and used the rest of the corporate profits to double the salaries of all the other workers, then used any remainder to pay for infrastructure and social improvements. (I'm sure some will see "communism" and high taxes here, but read on) With this structure, workers would share greatly in the success of the corporation, parents could go from 2-income to single income households, allowing a parent to stay home with the kids if they wanted. The extra money going for the common good could vastly improve health care. Our schools could provide top-notch educations to ALL kids. The list of benefits goes on. Remember, all that extra money comes from the hundreds of millions of dollars that is currently being hoarded by individuals who have more homes, cars, jets, and private islands than they can ever use. And we would all still have those $1M jobs to aspire to.
