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Originally Posted by Kevin Marx
I don't know why I have decided to comment in this thread and not really in others, maybe it's the picture that pisses me off the most, I don't really know.
It's not a hit it rich type of mentality. I was listening to talk radio today and the commentary was about college; about how there is this perception that college means success. There is a cultural stigma attached to those that graduate and those that don't and those that don't even attend. What happened to the culture of our fathers and grandfathers where hard work was valued rather than a "degree" or a piece of paper that indicates you are supposed to be a smart enough person to have met the necessary criteria to graduate? We have an entire generation or perhaps two that believes and has been taught that success only comes from education.
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You can blame the "job creators" for this. If they didn't require everyone to have such an education just to get your resume looked at, the mentality wouldn't exist. Its true though. Most any decent job, if you want to exist to them, you need a college education. Otherwise they'll just move on to the next candidate, which there is no shortage of.
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I earned a degree 17 years ago. Business Management. There was no guarantee then it meant more money and it hasn't meant more money since then. I have more money now because I viewed the marketplace I am a part of, found something that needed to be done/done better and determined that I could offer that at a price. We started a business and voila, there you go. Better earnings after we struggled to make it work right.
The degree was a personal goal and I knew from moment one it was no guarantee of anything.
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People obviously shouldn't view it as a guarentee but when you sink so much money into an education you expect something from it. These kids are getting an education because they have been told and tought its the way to a good job and once they have that huge debt, they need a decent job to start paying it off. Sure, it would be grand everyone could afford to go to school just to learn but that is no reality for the majority of americans.
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Public corporations are held to standards by Boards of Directors. If the BOD agrees to pay a CEO a ridiculous sum of money then that is up to them. BOD's are controlled by shareholders. If shareholders don't get what they feel is appropriate, the BOD gets reseated.
We as a population have no right to determine the pay structure of a public corporation. Now, however, the minute that company begins to operate in any way by accepting public funds, that's a different story entirely. And don't anyone go off on me and say that cops, roads, fire departments, airways and the air system, etc are public and therefore blah blah blah..... the corporation pays taxes too and has every reasonable right to utilize those services just as much as everyone/everything else. (In fact, IMO they have more of a right to participate in the system than the worker who doesn't earn that much and therefore isn't paying taxes at a level that a higher earner or corporation is). I'm talking something like the auto companies that couldn't function without a public bailout because they had operated like idiots for years. Hell they have enough subsidies prior to that where I would consider that the public has a very vested interest in how they are run. I feel exactly the same way about the food industry, fuel/oil, etc.
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But why are they making so much more in such a small time frame? What is really going on here? The CEO's do not determine the company's success. If anything the product designers, marketers and stockholders do more than anyone else. Oh not to mention the poor grunts actually making the product but they of course never see any real income increase. Wages have not increased at all to keep up with the standard of living while CEO's are keeping so much for themselves, one would imagine they care very little about the company and more about their wealth addiction.
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Originally Posted by WASHINGTON (CNNMoney)
In 2010, chief executives at some of the nation's largest companies earned an average of $11.4 million in total pay -- 343 times more than a typical American worker, according to the AFL-CIO.
"Despite the collapse of the financial market at the hands of executives less than 3 years ago, the disparity between CEO and workers' pay has continued to grow to levels that are simply stunning," said Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president.
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When I worked for an airline while going to college, I worked with 2-3 guys that had master's degrees and one that had a PhD. They worked with me on the ramp and loaded and unloaded baggage.
Degrees don't mean anything more than you have attended a school and achieved the necessary criteria to be awarded the degree/certificate. It's quite possible his advanced degrees have nothing to do with his field of work (although that would be a bit illogical) and it's also quite possible that his employer really didn't care that he had the degrees or even that the pay raise for the education was nothing significant.
Education is one of the great scams these days. Colleges and Universities are BIG BIG BIG businesses and they are almost all subsidized to the hilt with public funds.
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The guy could be a lazy piece of shit who deserved to get fired. There are all kinds of variables but the reality is those who have, have more than ever and those who don't are struggling more than ever and if the powers that be think the little guy is just going to keep taking it to the chin, I think they will be sorely mistaken. Do you really think its reality for 9 million unemployed people to start their own business all of a sudden? Is there really much demand for home run/small businesses right now? I see more and more people who were once self employed or running a small business looking for a job because they aren't making money anymore. There are no easy answers but if you think all is well in the world and these unemployed people are just lazy entitlement babies, I think you are very wrong.