Wednesday, July 22

The rich-poor divide

I read this from a website.

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Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
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And how much hard work did Michael Jordan put in as compared to the combined effort of the factory workers?

It reminds me of the salary distribution in most companies. It's never a nice normal distribution (bell-shaped) curve. Chances are that the average salary exceeds the median salary, denoting a huge skew in salary.

The few rich people in most large organisations are damn rich, while the majority are on "normal" pay.

And do these rich folks deserve it? Of course! It takes an exceptional people to be Michael Jordan. And also gutsy people to create their own business empires.

But then there's also things like Wall Street, AIG and those big bonus-paying banks, where the rich fiddles with the cash of the poor and ignorant.

Its reflections like these that makes me wonder why I work so hard for the directors and bosses company sometimes.

This post was not meant to be whiney. I just need to slap myself now and then not to get too comfortable being an employee.

After all, why be good when you can be much better?
Why be good when you can be boss God?

Nino has shared the following link, take a look.
Link: Executives receive one-third of all pay in the U.S.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent post! I struggle with this idea myself, (working for a bank)... a select few profit while the rest of us just "get by"... though I'd rather be ME then be THEM when it comes to the long-term ;)

Anonymous said...

Just read this in my RSS feeder AFTER I posted my first comment:

Per: Wall Street Journal via. ThingProgress.org - I know this is U.S. based only, but I can only imagine it is the same universally.

Case-in-point:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/21/executive-pay-wsj/

Roxy. said...

I guess satisfaction pays better then the pay for a few, even though yeah some have pays better then the rest of the average ones.

7-8 said...

It didn't always use to be this way. In the 60s in the US, the ratio between the top and the bottom compensation in a company was about 1:50. Now it's dunno how many hundred / thousand.

They did a comparison of wealth with 30 years ago, and found that the top 1% of ppl in US got richer - and everybody else got poorer.

Who is to blame? Everybody who lets his boss get away with something like this, which means everyone.

khengsiong said...

Apple's Steve Jobs and Google's Eric Schemidt both receive $1 as their annual salaries. As stockholders, they do get dividends, but that is provided that their companies make money.

By comparison, GM's ex-CEO receive $14 million in 2007 even though his company was losing money.

There are different kinds of people...

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