Both sides benefit themselves by inflating the currency, which is a tax. In Cyprus they want to reach into the accounts and skim a percent to pay the interest on money they should never have been loaned if the lenders did any due diligence on creditworthiness. But there are 2 ways to get the fruits of your labor - one is to leave you with less than what you had (Cyprus), and the other is to make what you have worth less (inflation). Same ol' same ol'.....
I guess your point is that the sound man wouldn't have a job but for Jay-Z. I doubt too many people at Apple resented Jobs' wealth either. You can't say that for the vast majority of corporate america however. How many CEO's truly add value? Maybe a handful. I'm far from a socialist, but there is something wrong about a society in which there are such vast disparities in compensation based on basically being oin the right place at the right time or having the right parents. The flaw in the argument about needing to incentivize and reward CEO's is that the bad ones get rewarded as fulsomely, and in many cases more fulsomely, than the few true value-adders. The main criterion for compensation is size of the enterprise. That creates dangerous incentives of its own, as we have seen in banking.
Perhaps CEO compensation disparity arose from M/A years ago and LBO's. One company buys another, CEO of company B is now history, CEO of company A collects both salaries. Or, CEO compensation with stock. Stock price rose, salaries rose, stock price fell, salaries still rose on future stock price gains.
It all started with Pres. Clinton. He put a tax surcharge on income over one million. This prompted the change to compensation from capital appreciation such as stock and options. It can be hard to control enormous payoffs when a stock rises multiple times for what ever reason. I doubt a Board would ever agree to 100 million dollar payoff but with stock movements it is unavoidable. Many employees have access to discount stock purchases
Thanks. I couldn't remember the history of it but that sums it up. I think too some of this spilled over into the civil servant sector. Public employee's being paid on the size of the budget they manage. One example is Jack Lew making 850k at NYU.
No, but it is quite easy to calculate the trajectory of debt issued and income brought in and make the educated statement of "there's just no way in hell".