Study: Most prefer wealth distribution similar to Sweden

And a lot of these board members get paid in stock options too, so it is like one hand washes the other.

And comparing athletic salaries to teacher salaries, consider this, if you are only looking at the 750 major league baseball players who earn a minimum of 300K, it does look out of whack, but if you add in all the players at single A, double AA, triple AAA, who are earning meal money and not a lot more. Some of the single A players actually live with host families to save on lodging, they are earning much less than a union teacher.
So while the MLB salary chart does end on a much higher note, 30 million a year for A-Rod, most of the ballplayers earn so much less. When you consider the very bad odds against a single A or college ball player making the majors, the teachers have a much better deal, especially if they get tenure.

Re athletics and entertainment earnings: When people stop worshiping them as gods and start thinking about how long it takes said people to earn money to buy something (ticket, cd, etc.), and then decide if it's worth it, those industries may decline. Of course, it will never happen.

Re the good ol' boys: Every company I ever worked for was into that. New CEO, guys from his old company or guys from his old company who had moved to another company filter into the top echelon.

Unisys: Rand brought in a former US Secretary of the Treasury to run the show. He merged Rand and Burroughs (the power of 2) and almost caused the demise of Unisys. He left in the middle of the tanking, with millions for himself AND millions for his wife.

These guys are not held accountable and that is from the boards. The boards say "compensation is in line with the same positions in other companies" and so the robbing continues.

How do you get people to become doctors or scientists or inventors when you put a ceiling on what they can earn for their hard work? As soon as you limit income potential, you will also limit the enthusiasm and excitement needed to be "all you can be". We have all benefitted greatly from those who went beyond the norm.... not all did it for the money, but without that reward, is there any doubt that we would have built such a high standard of living without it? There is no way to make everything equal at this point, we rejected Communism a long time ago.

CriticalBill wrote: How do you get people to become doctors or scientists or inventors when you put a ceiling on what they can earn for their hard work? As soon as you limit income potential, you will also limit the enthusiasm and excitement needed to be "all you can be". We have all benefitted greatly from those who went beyond the norm.... not all did it for the money, but without that reward, is there any doubt that we would have built such a high standard of living without it? There is no way to make everything equal at this point, we rejected Communism a long time ago.

Did you read any of this thread?

Yes I did, how else do distribute wealth more equally unless you take from the higher earners and give to the lower earners? Maybe I missed something but I thought this was about income equality.

CriticalBill wrote: Yes I did, how else do distribute wealth more equally unless you take from the higher earners and give to the lower earners? Maybe I missed something but I thought this was about income equality.

No, it's about extreme income inequality and how things have gotten to the point where it is so in this country that we are beginning to resemble South American oligarchies more than Western Europe in terms of income distribution.

No one, not one person, in this entire thread suggested "taking from the higher earners (to) give to the lower earners. The discussion has been about how some at the very top of the income heap have rigged things such that there is no accountability no matter how high they raise their own salaries and perks.

These things don't just happen by accident, and they also don't seem to be the way the vast majority of people in this country want it to be. That's not to say you fix it by just taking away money from the top earners. You look at what systemic issues have allowed things to get so out of balance and see what can be done to remedy it.

It's happened before in this country, during the era of the "Robber Barons" and it was brought back into balance by passing legislation that limited the ability of certain companies to block free trade through monopolies and price fixing. The situation is somewhat different today, but that doesn't mean it can't be remedied through similar measures.