Greed and Pointless Accumulation

The Mobility Myth - New York Times: "&hellips;the paper reported that the chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9 percent raise that the average California worker saw last year. The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series 'Class Matters,' wrote, 'It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known.'"

While I understand that a certain amount of upward mobility is called for, it would appear that the only people moving upward are those already at the top. It does beg the question: at what point does one have enough? Does it make any long-term sense to pay salaries at such levels? What could these people possibly do with all that money? What strikes me as particularly interesting is the way people will excuse this behavior because they hold out some sort of mythic hope that they too might achieve such obscene wealth. And yet, it has always been the case that such wealth is the province of very few.