The rich will try to steal your land your water your thoughts and soon even your air

here's the funny thing that the religious right bible thumpers wealth protectors miss.

the bible says the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. there's nothing that says those with wealth are the righteous so..... by process of elimination that put them in the wicked category.

you will know them by their fruit so... does anything seem good about a people that are filled with self righteous hypocrisy. do as we say not as we do.

if you think about america the ways and extent they have been going through to protect the wealth of those on top it is outright scary. these "christians" totally throw out 99% of the teachings of christ.

I thought there was more scientific evidence to back up this sort of thing, like how people that get promoted into upper management tend to have sociopathic tendencies?

Office politics, brown nosing and sucking up to management is how some people get promotions ahead of more hard working, quietly spoken work colleagues. Taking credit for someone else's work and passing it off as their own. Office politics is very similar to cheating at school in assignments and exams and getting away with it.

This is contrary to the labor theory of value in many cases, the theory that states what you get out of work should be proportional to the work you put into it. Of course, this then gets hazy when you're talking about people who are also playing with land and capital, but if you're talking about direct salary, there is no way that the disparity between executive pay and average worker pay can be justified. The only difference between a housewife who labors with turbotax and such to keep the family finances in line and a wall-street banker who does the same thing is that the banker commands a larger vocabulary and operates at a higher level, but the amount of labor is precisely the same, and therefore should be valued the same.

Well our society is based on money, so talking about the value of someone's work from a non-monetary point of view is pointless.

A housewife value is she helps out her family, the wall street banker creates wealth for his company and is rewarded for it.

As I said the capitalistic model is not perfect, but tell why does almost every sucessfull country follow it?

The rich are stereotypical portrayed by the character Ebenezer from Charles Dickens 1843 classic, "A Christmas Carol".
One of the above posters is right about the Religious Right and powerful religious organisations influence law makers to ensure the rich and powerful top 10% remain rich and powerful.

It depends on how you measure "work you put into it" ...

Someone who goes to school for 19 years putting in far more time to be at (or close to) the top of their class, and then spends 30 years working excessively long hours to develop the skill and experience to become an executive has put in tens of thousands of hours of work to be able to do 1 hour of work as an executive; in contrast, the pot-smoking high-school drop out has put no work into being able to do 1 hour of work as a janitor.

Certainly, I think the pay of many CEOs at gigantic companies has become excessive primarily because of how they're paid. If it was up to me, I would have the executives in any company I was invested in paid primarily through stock-options that matured in 5 or 10 years; they would have a very solid salary (probably $200,000) but if they want to earn millions of dollars per year they would need to make decisions that worked out for the company in the long run.

Well my main issue with this research study is that it does not really go at the heart of the issue about wealth and ethics.
I think there should be a focus on another question.

As I asked, do bad people become rich or does wealth make people bad?

I think that is a question that would better explain our current society...

Also I think the way approach wealth and ethics is not based on any objective morals...

Its based on cost benefit analysis...

"In the first of  two studies, researchers found that those who drove more expensive cars (an admittedly questionable indicator of economic worth) were more likely to cut off other cars and pedestrians at a busy San Francisco four-way intersection than those who drove older, less-expensive vehicles."

http://blog.lendingclub.com/2007/10/10/incredible-statistics-about-millionaires-in-america

"According to this book, the average millionaire drives a Ford F-150 pickup truck. 80% made their money in one generation, and only 20% had more than 10% of their income come from inheritances. The average millionaire does not drive the latest-year's car, nor does he or she wear expensive clothes. The average millionaire invests around 20% of his or her income annually."

"In other experiments,  wealthier study participants were more likely to admit they would behave unethically in a variety of situations and lie during negotiations."

So, couldn't this be interpreted as wealthier study participants were more willing to be honest about how they would act in a variety of situations?

"In another, researchers found wealthier people were more likely to cheat in an online game to win a $50 prize."

It would be interesting to know how they defined "cheating" ...

I wouldn't be surprised if it was that wealthier people were willing to use their back-button to correct errors and then re-submit a form, and while this may not be the most honest way to win a prize if it was not explicitly stated that this was against the rules I could see how someone would not see it as being unetical to do this.