Re: Outsized Pay on Wall Street Persists

> “The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.””
>
> In what way is this person not mentally ill? In what world is this not simple addiction to money? Who in God’s name needs 20, or even 10 million dollars a year? If we lived in a sane society, this person would be the object of pity and ridicule- someone so completely given over to their wealth addiction that they will literally never have enough. It is people like this who will kill us.

Yeah.  In my mind, even getting $1.5 to $2 million is enough to
retire.  By "retire" I mean focus on things I think I might enjoy more
than my current carrier and try to monetize them, but if I can't
successfully monetize them I'd still be able to live comfortably.

There are a few people retiring from work at the moment.  They've been
at RIM for a long time (15+ years) and were there early enough to make
good money on stock options ($10 to $40 million).  Some people wonder
why they're retiring, but myself and a few others are wondering why
they didn't do it earlier.  But I guess at this moment they can leave
their respective teams feeling that they are established enough to
survive and thrive without them, whereas if they had left even 5 years
ago it would have been different.  But despite "retiring" they are all
restless people by nature, and their wealth just gives them the
opportunity to challenge themselves in a less stressful environment,
or an equally stressful environment with a different focus.  I won't
be surprised if they go on to found or grow other companies (one plans
to focus on the Accelerator Centre, which is a facility the University
of Waterloo uses to help students monetize their projects and start
companies),

At a certain point, once you've made your money, you don't need to ask
for what you are "worth".  I think Steve Jobs & some other executives
are good examples.  They are rich beyond most people's comprehension,
but they thrive on what they do, so they do it for a reduced pay
cheque.  Jobs works for $1/year, admittedly he is usually rewarded
with some stock as bonus, but the key is that his actual salary isn't
ridiculously beyond that of his employees.  The wage gap for CxO level
has grown astronomically, and I feel that it's bad for society
(increasing executive pay while holding/lowering that of others) and
it's bad for the share holders --  that money could be spent in other
ways to grow the companies or just given out as dividends.

I think the banks are even worse as they don't produce any physical
wealth.  But with bankers,the excessive bonuses aren't even at the CxO
level.  Somehow that industry has a massively inflated pay scale in
certain segments of it (not tellers obviously).

I'm not sure where I'm going with any of this :)

Jeremy

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