Question about what Obama just said.

[Final-Fan]

mrstickball said:

Final-Fan said:

TheRealMafoo said:

SciFiBoy said:

TheRealMafoo said:

SciFiBoy said:
did you earn it though? someone payed you it, but earning it means that its 100% fair given the work you do, so its unlikely thats true, especially if you earn more than 100k a year, i really dont see what human being is worth that much money, if any. the money you voulantry give is alot less than taxation and welfare would be giving them

So if a football team is going to gross 500 million a year with player x, and 300 million a year without him, he is not worth more then 100k?

what human is worth 100k a year for anything, sportsmen are a prime example, stupidly overpaid for a job that they could do for 22k a year, the average wage (in the UK)

I just want to make sure I understand this...

You own the football team, and your very trusty accountant tells you “Mr. X will play for us, and he is asking for 200k a year. If you accept, we will make 200 million more dollars”.

You're going to tell him “No man is worth more then 100k. Tell him no.”?

Obviously the market justifies that salary.  But I think that what he's talking about is what is rational (ironic I know).

The market is rational in one sense but in another way it can be pretty crazy.  Some people make $10 million a year.  Think about it:  what can a single person do in a day to really deserve over twenty seven thousand dollars for that one day of work?

They could invent a cure for cancer. That may be worth $10 million a year. There are plenty of things out there that could justify $10m/yr if market conditions were correct. You can deride CEOs and athletes all you like, but as consumers, we create the nessecary conditions for their pay to exist. If you want to lower a CEO's salary, then stop buying his company's products. If you want to make an athelete earn less, stop watching him play his sport, and don't buy his product.

Really.  THAT ONE PERSON cures cancer.  Or THAT ONE PERSON personally enables the research team to cure cancer.  I'm not saying the market doesn't create conditions that enable those salaries to exist, obviously it does.*  But a lot of those people make salaries that are out of proportion to what they truly, actually accomplish in a day.

*[edit:  I'm not denying that some extraordinary individuals exist that deserve enormous paychecks.  But although an investor who can see the subprime crisis coming ahead of time may be literally worth his weight in gold, I don't think this guy is fat enough to be worth 3 or 4 BILLION.]