Sure enough. But there are all kinds of ways to not pay all the taxes you might have otherwise, if you fully supported the system. What is the average CEO compensation? Not the anecdotes skimmed off the top few hundred, at the far end, but the average of all? (Do you ever notice that the reported averages of 'the 1%' are only of the top few hundred, not 3.3 million, in a nation of 330 million? A nation that falls for this kind of nonsense deserves the sad outcomes it is realizing.) It isn't necessary to be anything like an oiler on a train somewhere. Put another way; could you live comfortably on 400,000 a yr and no employees? You would pay taxes on that, sure. Would you pay more taxes on 10,000,000/yr as the anecdotal CEO of some large enterprise employing thousands, who also paid taxes? No doubt. There are slackers, and then, there are slackers. Under which model are you paying more taxes and supporting the current political context to the best of your abilities? Under which model are you bearing the greater burden for the collective? Some people love challenges more than others. It is a challenge to successfully manage a large enterprise for the benefit of shareholders, employees and customers. And when popular culture vilifies those who take on such challenges, it is another kind of challenge to see how much one can earn with no employees or shareholders at all except one's self and trade off the grief, taxes, and vilification for the satisfaction of meeting that different challenge. To hide in plain sight, which many? few? -- matters not in the least to them -- manage to do. Under which model are unions scatching their head and looking around, wondering where all the good jobs went? Beats me. It's their paradigm; it is their problem to figure out. Another clumsy tribal fork averted. But to the answer of many? few?, my experience has been 'many enough' in the world. There are lots of folks organized under this model, quietly doing business in the world, because they can. The answer to 'why?' is not an answer for the Herdists to provide, and it is moot if they even wonder or not. In my corporate efforts, the ratio of the compensation of the CEO to the lowest paid employee is exactly 100%. I am a responsible corporate entity. Sleep like a baby. Go get those evil CEOs-- whoever is left for whatever their reason, to chase that golden tribal ring. Dollars as value proxies? I guess. Proxies for what value? They print our dolars in DC these days. The value is cheerleaded by a poorly understood scoreboard on Wall Street, which disconnected itself from the value producing economies long ago by becoming self-referens,tial. Aka the now forty year death spiral of value in America. What do I mean? Because look -- there is still not so rotted meat on the carcass. There is still yet some good meat to carve. We are fine. Our children will be fine. regards, Fred
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