http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4823210732684331&pid=1.7

THIS IS WRONG. Here's why:

THE MINIMUM WAGE SETS THE VALUE OF ONE HOUR OF WORK. Since there is NO WAY to change the unit, "one hour of work", RAISING the minimum wage LOWERS the value of a dollar.

There is only a temporary relief achieved, which will be celebrated by the frankly stupid who think their bosses are fatcats being forced by government to pay more - but shortly, a Coke will be $3.00 instead of $1.50, and the Minimum Wage will return to a "non-sustainable wage".

IT IS NOT THE DOLLAR VALUE THAT MAKES A JOB LOW-PAYING. IT IS THE LACK OF REQUIRED SKILL. The unskilled will NEVER get truly high wages, because they are frankly and simply and unavoidably NOT VALUABLE workers.

California is flatly nuts. This is welfare, no more, no less, mandating that the unskilled be paid more for the same work. This must drive more businesses out of the State, and prices MUST RISE.

You know, Rome had the same problem, but Americans, just like most people, cannot imagine that anything applies to them - such things always happen to "other" people. They have no idea that pennies once bought a meal in the Colonies, or why it does not today.

Raising the minimum wage will be harmful in the long run for the reasons Rad stated above. But with California's economy, its impacts will be hard to identify plainly.

Regarding Patrick's link above: Here's an interesting article by Jordan Weissmann from the Atlantic which discusses how fast food operations keep expenses down in countries with high minimum wages. In Australia's case, while the adult minimum wage is more than $15 per hour, McDonald's can pay workers 16 years old and younger about $8 per hour. They use a lot of young workers.

Moreover, according to the article, fast food franchises in Europe have been moving towards automated ordering -- after the initial investment, a touch screen can pay for itself by eliminating the counter kid's wage line. I wouldn't be surprised to see more of that here. In fact, at Wawa stations in the northeast, you can special order sandwiches from the kitchen using a touch screen. Further, I'm sure most people have seen self-checkout stations at the grocery store or at Wal-Mart's by now.

The upshot from Weissmann's article: What if we raised the minimum wage in this country to $10 or $15 per hour?

"Were that to happen overnight, it would be a hugely traumatic process," Schaefer [analyst with Euromonitor International] told me. After all, virtually every fast food franchise in the country would have to rethink its business model as their profits evaporated. But as the international market shows, the models are out there. It would certainly mean more expensive burgers. It would almost definitely mean fewer workers, as restaurants found ways to streamline their staffs, either through better management or technology. And it might mean fewer chains catering to the bottom of the market.

Look to France to see how well a high minimum wage works.

Not.

Then there is assault on personal freedom: the government insists on unemployment, rather than accepting a job for less than the minimum wage.

If I was evil, I could support the minimum wage laws and convince myself I was an angel.

"Okay, people. I have 25 bucks to give... previously, that was for 3 of you, but now... we'll have to let one of you go. Sorry."

Can't for the life of me figure out why this is hard to understand. I guess everybody thinks that $25 is elastic, and can just expand, never wondering WHERE that money will come from.

New at McTaco's, Big Macarenas are on sale! 2 for just $22.22!

I'm with Patrick.

I'm for it.

Old RPM Daddy is right - it will mean more investment in automation. Same as happened in manufacturing when labor rates got pushed too high.

Probably would have happened anyway mind you, whenever the capital investment made sense, but this will accelerate the process. Not only does it make the numbers look better, but machines don't come back looking for another pay rise in three years, and they will factor that in.

The interesting thing is that usually only the big chains can afford to invest in workable technology for either employee free point of sale or an online presence. So the short-term impact of raising the minimum wage is to force small businesses out of the market until the cost and upkeep of the technology drops to the point where they can adopt it.

@SwissAD: "Can't for the life of me figure out why this is hard to understand. I guess everybody thinks that $25 is elastic, and can just expand, never wondering WHERE that money will come from."

I suspect some folks would suggest that the money would come from those obscene profits they're sure the owner has socked away somewhere. The article I linked to above contains a link to a table developed by Janney Capital Markets, which shows the estimated breakdown of a typical franchise McDonald's sales and costs. Typically, a franchise makes about $0.06 for every dollar of sales, while non-management labor equates to about 20% of sales. Not a lot of margin to work with.

Once you get set up with automatic ordering, then you'll end up with an
automatic burger maker. At the rate of 400 per hour.

Once the cost of labor is near the cost of automation, burger flipping jobs will no longer exist. Enjoy your funemployment. And as the automated burger makers scale up their production, the cost of each unit will decrease making it an even better capital expense.

Besides, you don't have to buy it health care coverage.

It will push those businesses and people who can toward employing illiegals.

More legal workers will work under the table, and those who are pushed out of the workforce entirely will go on welfare, SSi etc, more quickly draining the public dime, so the state bankruptcy will come several months earlier.

Wow, a McDonald's franchise only has a margin of 6%? That's not very good, considering the initial and periodic investments required, and the business risks. (Speaking of which, the McDonald's franchises in my area are all eliminating their playgrounds...) I'll repeat some things that I've said here before. As near as I can tell, from the data I've been able to get hold of, the free-market value of unskilled labor in the West is in the $3-4 per hour range. When the government demands that it be artificially inflated above that, the business owner is motivated to do one or more of the following:

1. Offshore the labor.
2. Only employ classes of people that can be paid less than the legal minimum, for whatever reason.
3. Use automation to eliminate the labor.
4. Don't go into the line of business that requires the labor.

#1 is pretty much complete in the U.S.; with a few sector exceptions, pretty much all of the labor that can be exported (mainly manufacturing) has been. #2 plays into RPM's example of the Australian teenagers who can legally be paid a sub-minimum wage. In the U.S. we have the example of the illegal immigrants in the Southeast who are hired to work in the chicken processing plants and can be (illegally) paid below minimum because of their status, and we have the semi-legal example of the California seasonal immigrant farm workers. RPM also gave an example of #3, where automation is being used to eliminate employees in food service.

#4 is the tough one becuase it's difficult to quantify; no one keeps records or necessarily even knows about people who simply decide not to go into a line of business because of stuff like artificial minimum wages. All anyone ever sees is "Gee, the economy is slowing down." Usually immediately followed by, "It's because the fat cats are sitting on their profits instead of hiring people!" And the magical belief in the secret Scrooge McDuck money bin continues unabated. Even when you show them the accounting and the books, most people in the West today are too innumerate to understand it, and they don't want to anyway.

"Even when you show them the accounting and the books, most people in the West today are too innumerate to understand it, and they don't want to anyway."

I was told there'd be no math on this exam.

I don't have all the solutions, but I do know that the wage gap between the rich and the poor is at its greatest point in 80 years. There aren't good factory jobs. Jobs were people begin as unskilled labor and can work their way up are few and far between. People are starting work at these minimum wage jobs and staying there without benefits. Once stuck in a minamum wage job, it's almost impossible to climb up. The poor and middle class struggle with transportation and the high cost of higher education. Could you live even on $10 per hour? PS. Even if young workers earn less, that's not all bad. Those kind of jobs can go back to "starter jobs." Good managers will be that much more important.

Wow, a McDonald's franchise only has a margin of 6%?

That's actually not bad for a volume business. A grocery store has a margin of about 1%. That means for every $1 you spend in the store, the company has 1₵ leftover to spend on opening new stores, redesigning and reconfiguring existing ones, developing new processes and workflows, incorporating new products (like gas stations), and dividends to reward investors.

Cut out the 1₵ and the company is less-competitive in a very competitive industry. Grocery stores are facing strong competition from discount stores (Target, Walmart, etc.), warehouse stores (Costco, Sam's), dollar stores, and other purveyors of boxed, canned, and packaged foods. Many of them have non-food items in the product mix, so they can sell food items at or below cost and make it up on the other items.

In addition, most California grocery chains are unionized. Wanna bet UFCW and SEIU will be using the new minimum wage as a basis to demand higher union wages?

California is in danger of pricing its unskilled labor out of the market.

-The unskilled will NEVER get truly high wages, because they are frankly and simply and unavoidably NOT VALUABLE workers.-

Additionally, what does one pay the skilled worker as the wages of the unskilled go higher and higher?

I'll leave it to Don Boudreaux, a far better economist than I will ever be: http://tinyurl.com/oak5vo6

One thing people need to do before deciding to work for minimum wage is to ask questions if they get hired, like "Is there a regular schedule for receiving increases in the wage?" and "What are the opportunities for advancement like." If you are told they don't exist, DON'T TAKE THAT JOB!

Minimum wage is supposed to serve as a starting point to try to achieve more in your life. You are not supposed to make minimum wage for the rest of your life and depend on government-mandates increases in the minimum wage before you get a raise.

I remember how the price of gas hovered around a dollar in the 80's. That's because the minimum wage only went up once in 1980. When the minimum wage went up, the price of gas started going up to $1.50 a gallon and never went back.

My prediction? More businesses moving from CA to Texas. And, unfortunately, more cali asshats following the jobs. We've got more than we want or need here already.

"I remember how the price of gas hovered around a dollar in the 80's. That's because the minimum wage only went up once in 1980. When the minimum wage went up, the price of gas started going up to $1.50 a gallon and never went back."

Something has occurred to me recently. I've noticed that lately there is an awful lot of nostalgia for the locally-owned and small-franchise fast food places and drive-ins that were so common in the U.S. in the 1950s and '60s. There are some family here locally that once owned such places and have been posting stories about them in the Facebook local history pages. And the conventional explanation for why they all went out of business is that they couldn't compete with the economies of scale of the franchises.

However, I wonder if that's the real reason. We all know that, often, in a mature industry the big players will actually welcome government regulation and intervention, because it raises the price of entry and keeps potential new competitors out of the market. Fast food is a pretty mature industry today. There's still competition, but not as much as there used to be. There's not even that many local franchise owners; a lot of the franchises are held by big franchise-owning conglomerates. So competition is reduced. What I'm starting to think is that "economy of scale" was not what put the mom-and-pop fast food places under -- it was the minimum wage and the accompanying benefit mandates. And the market giants that exist now, although they may publicly grumble, probably secretly welcome minimum wage increases because of the market lock-in it gives them.

"I don't have all the solutions, but I do know that the wage gap between the rich and the poor is at its greatest point in 80 years."

Market communication brings more business. The pay of executives may make you mad, but here's a thought: that's not your business. Nor is it mine. There are charters that cover that.

"There aren't good factory jobs. Jobs were people begin as unskilled labor and can work their way up are few and far between."

If you define a "good" factory job as one requiring no thought or skill, but paying a lot, like early UAW jobs, nostalgia doesn't work here anymore, either, and these jobs have been going away for decades because automation is cheaper than wages and Federal mandates.

"People are starting work at these minimum wage jobs and staying there without benefits. Once stuck in a minamum wage job, it's almost impossible to climb up."

This isn't a reason to saddle the nation with worthless fiat money trashed by minimum wage or other laws.

The Ontario government raised minimum wage to $10.25 an hour a couple years ago.

It killed the job market, draining employer's ability to hire more than the bare minimum required to get the job done.

Coupled with mandatory bilingualism, it effectively killed the Ontario workforce. Our population is leaving in droves for provinces with lower unemployment rates and unilingual work environments.

I saw some prototype agricultural robots the other day. They’re just moving potted plants around for now, but in a few years, more advanced versions will be able to gather tomatoes, make beds, sweep floors and flip burgers, round the clock, with no needs for benefits other than maintenance.

What are we going to do with all the people who used to do these jobs? We can’t retrain them to be middle managers or robotic engineers — and even if we could, we won’t need that many.

Best to begin thinking about an answer now, before the prole riots start...

I blame the fatcats. Once upon a time, a CEO made about ten times as much his average employee. Now they want to make 200 times as much. And a lot of them make even more than that.

Mike Duke, Wal-Mart CEO, makes over 1030 times as much as a mid-level Wal-Mart employee. Why?

Is he 1030 times as smart? Does he work 1030 times as hard? Did he work for the company 1030 times longer? Did he contribute 1030 times as much? Are his skills 1030 times as valuable? Do all these factors, and any more than you can think of, added together make him 1030 times as valuable? I doubt that.

There was a time when the CEOs wanted a lot. Now they want all.

There are no Edward Albert Filenes left in the business world. On the subject of the exorbitant tax rates that he had to pay, he famously declared, "Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them."

So, Patrick.

WalMart has a corporate charter, which sets the mechanism by which the CEO is paid.

It isn't your business what he makes. Their board of directors and stockholders get to say that, based on their charter. Do you want to set that aside?

Madonna is the wealthiest singer in the world. She is more than a thousand times wealthier than Kristin Chenoweth (a guess, made to illustrate the point). Do you want to take her money away, paid to her as a result of recording and appearance contracts?

It's OK. You can tell someone else.

6% is a pretty good profit margin.
Next remember, state sales tax is usually about that much.
Special taxes on certain products: tobacco, gasoline, alcohol, etc are much higher than the companies are earning.

'Waste, you can reply to me if you want, but I don't read your stuff.

And I'm pretty good at spotting it. Essentially, when the tone of the post reads like it was written by a ridiculous, embittered and vindictive queen, I realize it's you (who is governed by spite and hatred, let's face it) and I stop reading.

And when the post reads like it was written by a ridiculous, embittered and vindictive semi-literate queen, I know it's lujlp and I stop reading.

You may as well not address me in your replies. I don't read them and never will. And as I noted above, your tone makes your posts easy to spot. I didn't even get to the third sentence before I realized who I was reading.

But you know, perhaps other posters are interested in your responses to my points, but I'm not. You're not interested in dialogue with me. You're not even interested in debating me. You're not even interested in exposing any supposed faults in my arguments. You're interested in being spiteful, nothing else.

Life's too short, sweetcheeks. Let go of your hate.

"more cali asshats following the jobs. We've got more than we want or need here already. "

Love it or leave it, honey.

Please let's raise the minimum wage. The auto hamburger machine is the first of the devices that will automate the unskilled out of jobs.

When the cost of the devices start getting to the cost of two-three minimum wage workers the restaurant will replace all the minimum wage hamburger cookers.

When an automated touch screen system can take the customer's order it will replace the order clerk (e.g. Wawa).

When an automated system can replace the french fry person it will. I've seen automated systems already that automatically pull up fries after a certain amount of time. How long would it take to automate the rest of it?

Basically the cost of unskilled labor is in jeopardy as the cost of it goes up.

Way back when one of the most dangerous and costly jobs on a car assembly line was the paint room. If you see how a car is painted now, it is completely automated and inspected by a computer system. There is no real human involvement.

Why did that happen? Because the paint room was one of the most dangerous and costly jobs on a car assembly line. Granted it took years to develop, but it comes back to a cots/benefit value for the company.

If you ever read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged -- a company is just like a person. They do a cost-benefit analysis. Are you going to pay $400/mo to Allstate when you can the same coverage from Progressive for $200/mo? Why should an auto manufacturer pay $75k/yr for six techs instead of $100K/3yr for two robots?

But of course none of this makes sense to certain individuals.

Once upon a time, a CEO made about ten times as much his average employee. Now they want to make 200 times as much.

Your post reeks of populist naiveté and class warfare. LIke the sports fan who insists he could have coached the team better, you assume the job is easy and could be done by nearly anyone smart enough or lucky enough to reach middle management.

And you're comparing apples to oranges. Once upon a time, the average CEO made ten times the average employee's salary. At that time, he was probably running a US-only or a regional US company. Today, he's more likely to be running a multinational operation.

Mike Duke, CEO of Walmart, is running an operation with over 8,000 stores in 15 countries. The company has over 2 million employees and is the leading retailer in the world. While the Walton family still controls 48% of the stock, 52% of the stock is traded publicly on the NYSE.

The skill level required to manage an operation that large and diverse is difficult to find and people with that skill set demand a high level of compensation - much like top-level athletes, actors, and entertainers. I don't hear you objecting to Madonna or Bruce WIllis or Peyton Manning earning millions more than the average working stiff for doing a much less demanding job than Mike Duke is doing.

Investors and analysts don't value Walmart stock based on the fact that Judy has been promoted to manage the produce department in the Fargo store. They judge it based on the strategy for the company articulated by Mike Duke. They value it based on how well they feel Duke and his lieutenants have a handle on the industry and the competition.

Banks don't lend to Walmart because Paul is running the electronics department in the Bakersfield store. They lend and assess interest charges based on whether they think Duke and company's strategy and management will put the company in a position to be able to repay the loan on time and in full.

The ability for Walmart to continue to operate is not solely dependent upon its mid-level employees doing a good job for the customers. It also depends upon financial institutions and investors having confidence the company is well-run and well-positioned to meet future challenges.

So, yes, Duke may very well be worth 1,030 times what a mid-level employee at Walmart is worth.

Conan: Your post reeks of populist naiveté and class warfare.

Your post reeks of apologetics, and demagogic neologisms like "class warfare." /yawn Grow up, Conan. You're made of better stuff.

Would you like to take a another turn trying to insult me, and I will respond in kind, or would you like to discuss something meaningful?

Conan: I don't hear you objecting to Madonna or Bruce WIllis or Peyton Manning earning millions more than the average working stiff for doing a much less demanding job than Mike Duke is doing.

Perhaps because this thread has nothing to do with singers, actors or pro-ballers. This thread was about the minimum wage, raising it and the consequences of raising it.

Perhaps if Amy started a thread about these topics, I might weigh in. But don't assume I'm a-okay with it just because I chose not to bring it up here, in a thread where these topics will only be regarded as stunningly irrelevant.

(But if it makes you happy, Madonna's crappy music and all of professional sports could disappear off the face of the earth, and I'd never miss a beat. "Oh, but you would! The loss of professional sports has a huge effect on --" blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I personally have zero interest in them. I actually somewhat feel sorry for professional sports fans. What a meaningless existence.

Bruce Willis I might miss, but I don't see the world of popular entertainment suffering a crippling blow if he were no longer making movies. Actors come and go. Hollywood endures.)

Conan: The skill level required to manage an operation that large and diverse is difficult to find and people with that skill set demand a high level of compensation...

Bald assertion. He's not the first person to run a multinational corporation. I don't see why or how he couldn't just emulate the successes of other such corporations and duplicate their processes.

Conan: They judge it based on the strategy for the company articulated by Mike Duke. They value it based on how well they feel Duke and his lieutenants have a handle on the industry and the competition.

You produce product in sweatshops and simply sell at a lower price than everyone else. Brilliant strategy, Napoleon. I stand in awe...

Conan: So, yes, Duke may very well be worth 1,030 times what a mid-level employee at Walmart is worth.

Bullshit.

Conan: So, yes, Duke may very well be worth 1,030 times what a mid-level employee at Walmart is worth. -- Conan the Grammarian at September 16, 2013 6:49 PM

Bullshit. -- Patrick at September 16, 2013 7:54 PM

You're right, Duke probably is not worth the 1,030 times income until they actually fix the Wal-Mart self checkout system a bunch. He's probably only worth about 250 times of worth average employee.

But once they fix that self-checkout system that makes it preferable to a clerk it will make a difference. I use Kroger a lot. The single clerk on four lanes can look at me from a distance and approve alcohol sales. Meanwhile the clerk at Wal-Mart has to come over and approve it manually. I have even been asked for ID at 40+ by the Wal-Mart clerk (how stupid).

So please justify why I need to have six clerks to one customer at the same time I can hire six to one?

Patrick, supply & demand isn't just a good idea, it's the law.

Perhaps because this thread has nothing to do with singers, actors or pro-ballers. This thread was about the minimum wage, raising it and the consequences of raising it.

But, but, but....singers and pro-ballers and actors employ entire entourages of managers, secretaries, butlers, housemaids, make up artists etc etc. And so they are also running businesses in a sense and paying wages to staff. You wanna bet that those people pay their staff 1/250 of what they earn? I bet they pay their staff only 1/5000 of what they earn. Why the hell should they be exempt from the accountability which you are subjecting corporate leaders to?

Maybe it does not matter to you if madonna goes out of existence, but quite a lot of people probably cant do without these people and that is why these people have so much money in the first place. I am willing to take a $1000 bet that the vast majority of the fortunes of people like madonna come from the minimum wage workers whom you support so much. Those minimum wage workers want their ceo to not be paid even half of what he is getting paid, but they will not hold back on paying $100 for a stupid concert by one of these show biz ppl, hell they will even get into debt to attend a show or a movie while their ceo is attending meetings with bankers and dealing with politicians and bureaucrats in some shady third world(or corrupt rich country) risking his life in the process or going through some excel sheet with a few hundred columns and analyzing it and they want their ceo's pay to be cut while they are spending money on crap like this rather than saving it to get trained in doing their job better or in getting a better job or even investing it? Makes no sense to me and sounds totally hypocritical.

Patrick;

The thing that I think most people are trying to get at and I feel you have overlooked is that once you raise the minimum wage, everything else goes up in price right along with it.

Assume the minimum wage was $9.00/hr, (which it was in Ontario...) and you raise it to $10.25/hr, on a 40 hour work week. Also assume it is a small business, which are the ones that will be hardest hit, especially when you consider employment insurance and the like. We'll say for the math the business has 5 employees, and will not consider taxes.

At $9.00/hr, the payroll for 5 employees for 1 week would be $1800.00. Multiply that by 4 weeks, you're looking at $7,200.00 a month.

At $10.25/hr, the payroll for 5 employees jumps to $2050.00. Not all that much right? Multiply it by 4 weeks, your payroll expense jumps $1000.00 to $8,200 a month just to pay employees.

Then you have employment insurance to consider, workman's compensation, and countless other costs associated with payroll.

Think employers are gonna eat the cost?

I don't see why or how he couldn't just emulate the successes of other such corporations and duplicate their processes.

What happens when those processes no longer work?

Do you continue to lose money waiting for someone else to come up with a solution?

What if they don't come up with a solution before your company runs out of money?

You produce product in sweatshops and simply sell at a lower price than everyone else. Brilliant strategy, Napoleon. I stand in awe...

Except that strategy's not working so well for Kmart. And Shopko isn't exactly a world beating retailer. Maybe there's more to it than buy low and sell lower-than-the-other-guy.

Ask Ron Johnson how easy it is to run a major retailer. Of course, he was a good example of a bad CEO, so....

LIke a Monday morning quarterback, you fail to see the work that goes into creating the game plan, so you think it's only about basic blocking and tackling. That's why I labelled your earlier post naive.

I work in producing that game plan and tracking the results, so I know the amount of work that goes into it, and it's considerable.

It's difficult to sell lower than the other guy when your costs are higher than, or even the same as, the other guy's.

How do you reduce costs enough to continue to provide a level of merchandising and service that customers expect yet keep costs low enough to keep prices low?

How do you ensure that product is on the shelf when the customer comes to the store?

What products should be on the shelf, and how much shelf space do you devote to each product?

How do you keep a 10,000 mile supply chain running efficiently enough to keep up with a just-in-time inventory cycle?

What do you add to or subtract from the product mix to differentiate yourself from you closest competitor?

How far ahead do you plan so you can have the summer product line on the shelf by Memorial Day?

Do you lease or own your stores? What are the tax advantages of either?

How do you fund the next capital expenditure: borrow, sell stock, sell bonds, joint venture, some combination of these? What are the tax advantages and long-term implications of each of these methods?

How do you explain your business strategy to all those Harvard and Wharton MBAs in the next analyst call so they don't devalue your company's stock and affect your ability to raise capital?

CEOs are paid to think about these things 24/7 and are expected to know something about how to respond to business threats and changing market conditions. Bob in the sporting goods department in Boise isn't. Bob clocks out. CEOs don't.

Bald assertion. He's not the first person to run a multinational corporation. I don't see why or how he couldn't just emulate the successes of other such corporations and duplicate their processes.

You know what Patrick, Mike Duke gets paid less than the CEO or Abercrombie and the CEO of Diageo. And those are much smaller companies, but their margin is way more than that of wal mart. And you know why they are so profitable? Because so many of the people, lot of whom are quite ordinary somehow think it is worth paying $1000 for a bag which is no better than a $30 bag. So many of the people think that it is better to pay for whisky than to pay for healthcare. So Mike Duke is no big villain in any manner whatsoever. And the net margin of Wal-Mart is just 3%. They made a net profit of $12 bn on total sales of over $400 bn. Try running a business in that manner and still convincing people to fund your expansion. Chances are, no stockholder would ever invest in your company since the returns are lower than that of a cd in a bank and your business will be stuck at just one store with no money for expansion. It takes a hell of a lot more talent to run a Wal-Mart than it does to run a Diageo or an Abercrombie simply because one bad quarter and all profits will evaporate before you know it since there is hardly any buffer left. If anyone is to be blamed for the high pay of entertainers and sportsmen and the ceos of vanity cos like abercrombie and diageo, it is the minimum wage workers themselves and not the ceo's of the companies that actually do productive stuff and employ millions of people.

Patrick, you're assuming that something which you cannot, do not, and will never do...must be easy.

Common fallacy. Common stupid fallacy.

Fact is, not only does your opinion on his pay not matter...its totally NONE of your fucking business, because none of that money comes from YOU, unless you choose to shop there. Unless you own stock in it, you don't have a say in it, and he doesn't collect a penny of your earnings that you do not voluntarily hand over in exchange for low cost goods.

'But these guys get paid soooo much!' Well, he's not as easily replaced as Patty the Greeter or Mike the Middle Manager.

You yourself point out that a great many CEOs make wages similar to his, same thing, scarcity of skillset.

If its so easy, why don't you shut up, go do it yourself, then donate your earnings to the needy? After all, you assert you have a profound grasp of the strategies for corporate success on the global market.

Or...are you lazy AND ignorant? Winning combo dude.