There are 212,000 people employed by GENERAL MOTORS. There is one person, the CEO responsible for all those people. Each union member at GM earns on average, $75,000 a year in salary and benefits. How much should the CEO be paid? Simple arithmetic would show since he is responsible for each one of the employees he should be paid at least as much as the employee. So 212,000 times $75,000 equals just about $16 billion dollars a year. Too much money for one person to earn?
For the sake of argument lets say the CEO should only get 10% as much as each worker. After all, the CEO is responsible for the all of the work done by the worker and the managers but for sake of argument if he is limited to 10% of the income of each worker he should be paid $1.5 billion a year. Still too much you say? How much should the CEO really make?
If the CEO is paid 1% as much as a worker he would be paid $150,000,000 a year. One Hundred Fifty Million. It stands to reason he should be paid based on the pay of the employees, right? Some CEO’s make lots more per employee than 1%. The Progressives are complaining CEO’s make 150 times as much as an employee. They call it “The Income Gap”. If we use GM as an example, 150 times $75,000 is $11 million. That’s only zero point zero seven percent as much as the employees earn. That hardly seems fair because the CEO is responsible for all the jobs of all the people who work at GM.
But the facts are different than the Progressives want to admit. They refuse to talk about the differences in what the CEO does compared to the workers.
A worker in at GM is paid, not only for their labor, but for all the genius’ who has made the GM factory possible: the industrialist who built it, the investors who saved their money to buy stock to risk on the untried and the new, the engineer who designed the machines on which workers just push the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the cars which they spend their time making . . .
In proportion to the mental energy of the CEO, the CEO receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. Same for the owners of the stock who do no work but without whom there would be no GM.
But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which Progressives, Liberals, the Left, the Communists, the Socialists damn the capable. the 99% literally owe their existence to the CEO they and the Left condemn.
*Thanks to Ayn Rand who wrote about the above.
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