Executives make too much money. No one needs more than a million dollars for themselves in a year. I’d have trouble spending that much money in a week if it was all for myself. Ever seen Brewster’s Millions? Canada’s wealthiest “workers” make $38,000 on average, by 9:00 AM on the first workday of the year.
A minimum wage earner makes around 16,000/year.
The Average Canadians makes 38,000/year.
Meanwhile, I can hardly believe that minimum wage isn’t $10/hour in Ontario yet. There just isn’t enough money there for a family to live on, but it fits with the absurd wages of Canada’s richest people. Life’s like that unfortunately – the rich get richer, and the poor tend to stay poorer. Hopefully 2007 is a more equitable year for all Canadians, and we see a massive personal income tax cut in the form of a personal exemption level rising to something that makes more sense than what we have now.
UPDATE:
I think we have to find a way around the problem of limiting CEOs to a reasonable salary, without going down the disastrous road that communism tends to bring where we’d still have rich SOBs with too much money, but no way to compete for it.
There must be some way to remain capitalistic, yet encourage the hyper-rich to better reinvest their money instead of sinking it into a dozen homes or vehicles for themselves alone.
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Stephen Glauser | 03-Jan-07 at 12:17 am | Permalink
$10 an hour isn’t enough for a single person to live on anywhere in Canada, let alone an entire family. The highest min. wage in Canada is in Nunavut at $8.50/hr and the lowest is in New Brunswick at $6.70/hr. I worry more about NB’s wage (where there isn’t close to the job opportunities as there is in Ontario) than the one in Ontario.
Although I do agree a $10 min. wage would be a good idea.
Ross | 03-Jan-07 at 12:18 am | Permalink
WTF Saskboy !!! what does it matter if people don’t need more than a million dollars a year, and some people honestly do need that and more to make a living.
I don’t need to drink chocolate milk, but I still like to occasionally indulge in its chocolatey goodness.
Are you going to be suggesting that just because some farmers don’t need more than a quarter section of land, the remaining farmers shouldn’t have more than that either ?
Although this isn’t necessarily true for the entire nation, all the ‘poor’ people that I know are poor because they are lazy or have no ambition, not because of minimum wage or some executive sniping all their money. In fact, I know several people that make in excess of $300,000.00 a year,and they aren’t executives, but hard working stiffs like anyone else. Are you saying that just because they might not be able to put all that money to use in that year that they aren’t entitled to it ?
Ross | 03-Jan-07 at 12:20 am | Permalink
also, those same people that i mentioned that make that money still have a lot of expenses to cover and don’t take home that entire chunk of change.
Lance | 03-Jan-07 at 12:35 am | Permalink
The fallacy that the ‘poor remain poor’ is patently false. The _percentage_ of poor in society is stable, not the _people_ themselves.
What does that tell us? That people don’t like being poor and work their way out of it, but that others are always starting in it or falling into it.
Fact of life, you don’t have as much money at 25 than you do at 35 than you do at 45 than you do at 65. Youth has advantages other than financial stability.
Cheers,
lance
Adrian MacNair | 03-Jan-07 at 2:06 am | Permalink
Lance, what evidence do you have for this “graduation” from poverty theory?
With certainty I can tell you that the vast, vast majority of those stuck in poverty, remain in poverty, regardless of work ethic. Some of the hardest and most bright individuals I have ever met never made more than a middling income. The point of Saskboy’s post was to reveal the unadulterated greed among the top execs in Canada. Rather than admit this truth, Lance would rather wallow in irrelevancies and assumptions.
I truly believe the greatest failures in this society are the most ethical people.
Devon Rowcliffe | 03-Jan-07 at 2:12 am | Permalink
The $10 minimum wage debate is raging in British Columbia, too:
http://www.devonrowcliffe.ca/blog/?p=224
brem | 03-Jan-07 at 9:50 am | Permalink
If minimum wage was 10$, I’d want a raise too.
Lance | 03-Jan-07 at 11:05 am | Permalink
Well, Adrian, Stats Can with me. (Same table, one in hard numbers, one in percentages)
Percentages of Persons in Low income from all categories reduced from 2000 to 2004. As people were undoubtably entering the job market as the same time as the percentage of low-income dropped that means one of three things: the people in low income shifted with the less of the new workers taking the place of the previous poor, new workers skipped the poor classification and some poor escaped, a combination of the the two.
I think the third option is more reasonable.
Direct proof? No. Circumstanstial evidence, yes. You wont find anything to conclusively prove your theory either. The privacy laws forbid the stats gathering companies from disclosing that kind of info.
Cheers,
lance
Lance | 03-Jan-07 at 11:06 am | Permalink
oops, should have been: “Stats Can agrees with me”
Saskboy | 03-Jan-07 at 6:51 pm | Permalink
“those same people that i mentioned that make that money still have a lot of expenses to cover and don’t take home that entire chunk of change.”
Ross, I’m not talking about farmer who may gross $300,000 but owe the banks many times that. The input costs of being a CEO are negligible, and it’s important they do their job well, but not so critical that we pay them like princes.
“I don’t need to drink chocolate milk, but I still like to occasionally indulge in its chocolatey goodness.”
Everyone has their guilty pleasures, but if you had $1M pure net profit each year, would you really have a use for it all? It would be a full time job just spending that kind of money and you wouldn’t have room to put it all. You could get creative and buy expensive cars, but that really doesn’t benefit very many people, and how fair is it that one person have 20 luxury cars, and most people in the world have no vehicle?
Adrian MacNair | 03-Jan-07 at 7:05 pm | Permalink
I still see no logical relevancy to justifying paying one person $11 million a year by claiming the relative worth of people making $8 an hour in a free market.
$ aren’t everything, and neither are arguments. Paying people $8 an hour is criminal.
John Murney | 03-Jan-07 at 8:52 pm | Permalink
Careful, Saskboy. Ideas like yours will be labelled as “socialist” by the extreme right and trounced on!
Saskboy | 03-Jan-07 at 10:01 pm | Permalink
Adrian wraps it up nicely here, as do the next 3 commenters on that blog.
http://www.adrian.josephlavoie.com/2007/01/03/10-per-hour-its-just-not-worth-arguing-anymore/
Obviously very few people agree with one human making more money in a day for playing hockey, baseball, or running Microsoft, than you or I will make in a year or years. The problem is if people like Lance admits that the numbers may not tell the human toll, then the Commies will come and take over everything. It’s reasonable to be guarded, because communism does kill, but then again, so does making $8/h for a single parent. If CEO Moneybags found a non-communistic way to distribute his/her annual salary to just 100 of those hardworking yet impoverished Canadians, there would be 101 very well off people, instead of just 1, and 100 barely getting by.
Stephen Glauser | 03-Jan-07 at 10:08 pm | Permalink
I’ve got no problem with someone making a lot more money than most. I just think the gap should be a little closer. I think the idea that someone shouldn’t be earning $11,000,000 a year is ridiculous. Take Frank Stronach as an example. He built Magna from the ground up, and he shouldn’t be entitled to a good chunk of the money it brings in? Get real.
I do however have a problem with people working full time and still being below (or just above) the so-called poverty line.
Saskboy | 03-Jan-07 at 10:20 pm | Permalink
“Take Frank Stronach as an example. He built Magna from the ground up, and he shouldn’t be entitled to a good chunk of the money it brings in? Get real.”
Take Frank Thomas (too late the Blue Jays did). He’s entitled to millions of dollars for playing baseball, simply because he can hit a ball really far. It entertains, but it doesn’t exactly grow food or do anything too entertaining for most people in the world. It’s about as useless as blogging that way. Anyway, my point is that he can’t help that baseball is very popular and thus makes a lot of money to spread around within the baseball-econo-sphere.
If Frank doesn’t take his cut, then someone even less deserving of the fans’ money will get it, like a team owner. The teams have to charge a lot for seats so they attract the best players, and also pay for the stadium, and incidentals of the game. When a team is popular, getting a seat is tough, so that drives up prices of seats, even though they probably shouldn’t cost more than $15 each for everyone to make a tidy profit, if they cost that, not enough fans would get to enjoy going to games because they’d get crowded out.
The same thing happens in other areas not related to the messed up sports economy, and it highlights the absurdities in capitalism, where individuals earn fortunes more vast than they and their children could hope to sagely spend in their lifetimes. Since this happens at the same time we see brutal poverty in most parts of the world (even our Canadian city streets), I don’t think we should surrender to the idea that capitalism is our only hope for equity among all humans.
Stephen Glauser | 03-Jan-07 at 10:31 pm | Permalink
I too don’t think that capitalism is the only hope for equity among all humans, but it’s what we have right now and suggesting something as arguably trivial as a CEOs inflated salary will actually make much of a difference is farcical.
The problem of poverty is not limited to the few that are super rich are taking all the money, and changing the income level of a few hundred or thousand people will not make much of a difference. I doubt any at all in the long term.
I know I’m beating a dead horse, and we are obviously not going to agree, but I don’t think much of a dent will be made in the poverty problem unless there are serious and all-encompassing economic reforms. CEOs salaries are the least of our worries.
Saskboy | 03-Jan-07 at 10:41 pm | Permalink
I too don’t think CEO and sports salaries are THE problem, I think they are just a symptom of the problem of wealth distribution on earth among humans. We would possibly make things worse by going after sports stars and Moneybags, the same way you won’t get anywhere by treating cancer with cough medicine.
Miss Cellania | 04-Jan-07 at 7:03 pm | Permalink
I can’t imagine kinds of numbers. Once you make more money than you can spend, a raise means nothing. Is the Canadian dollar worth less than the US dollar? Minimum wage here is $5.15 an hour, or about $12,000 a year. I hear arguments on the internet that “no one makes minimum wage”, but if you make $5.50 an hour, you’re still poor, and you can’t afford to get on the internet and make yourself heard. There are an AWFUL lot of people making less than $7 an hour here.
Saskboy | 04-Jan-07 at 7:08 pm | Permalink
In recent history, the C$ has been worth about 86% of the US$. When the US$ crashes from the Iraq War debt, we could end up with our currency at par, or even a more valuable C$.
There are a lot of jobs in Canada where $8/h is normal, but if someone tries to live on that, let’s just say it’s a good thing it’s illegal to cut off someone’s heat in the middle of Winter…
Stephen Glauser | 04-Jan-07 at 7:45 pm | Permalink
Saskboy, it’s illegal to cut off someones heat in the winter? What happens if the electricity gets cut off? Can you cite a reference… is this a federal or provincial thing?
Sorry for the off-topicness, but I’m interested.
Ross | 04-Jan-07 at 9:17 pm | Permalink
there are a lot of jobs that pay significantly more than $8 an hour in canada that don’t require anything more than a drug test. the employers train their employees themselves, and they don’t require any kind of post secondary education, and in some cases not even a high school diploma.
the wealthiest and most succesfull people i know now were considered the most likely for failure during high school because they were either under achievers or just plain stupid compared to others. on the other hand, a lot of the people i know that completed college or university, are either struggling to find work, or working in a profession completely unrelated to their education that they could have got without going to school.
and here is a link for you stephen about the legalities of shutting off utilities, i assume its an american site but they are probably nearly the same here too.
http://www.legalassist.org/brochures/power_shut_off.html
Ashley | 04-Jan-07 at 9:22 pm | Permalink
The UN considers it torture to expose a person to “extreme heat or cold”, and in countries with cold winters, this has been used in court to prevent heat from being disconnected, even when the bill remains unpaid.
Saskboy | 04-Jan-07 at 9:25 pm | Permalink
Thank you Ross and Ashley for the info updates.
Ross, how many of those jobs enable the employed to remain at home and raise a family. Nearly any schmo could drive truck, or work on the oil rigs for a tidy profit, but it isn’t exactly possible for someone will small kids. Do any jobs come to mind in a city or town that pays much better than minimum wage to a lady or gent with a diploma or less?
Ross | 04-Jan-07 at 10:34 pm | Permalink
i know you didn’t mean anything personally but i take offense to being regarded as a schmo. until someone works in the trucking or oil industry they shouldn’t pass judgement.
i agree these jobs aren’t the most conducive for relationships, or family but until people have exhausted all options they shouldn’t complain about being unemployed or not making enough money. if you have a family to feed, and pumping the gas at the local convenience store isn’t providing enough money, you might have to suck it up and be away from home to support your family.
i don’t think my friend betty(who by the way attended the UofA and Medecine Hat College) wants to be away from his home and his friends back here in sask but in order to pay for his truck, and enjoy the lifestyle he’s used to he has made the choice to drive truck for a company that has him on the road almost all the time.
Ross | 04-Jan-07 at 10:38 pm | Permalink
and thanks for wishing me happy birthday
Saskboy | 04-Jan-07 at 10:53 pm | Permalink
Schmo meant Average Joe/Jane, not in a derogatory way (but Jane is given a hard time on the Rigs I’ve heard). Your point was that an average person could make decent money in the right area, but my point is that the “right area” tends to be only for men, and specifically single ones or ones willing to live away from their children.
Ashley | 04-Jan-07 at 10:58 pm | Permalink
Ross, if pumping gas for min wage isn’t paying the bills, who is gonna look after the kids while the parents are off working out of town? If I can’t pay the bills, i certainly cant afford to pay someone to look after my children for long hours. And it really isn’t fair to expect family and friends to look after my children continually for free. I don’t know of ANYONE who would want to look after children for free on a continual basis, even if it was only until i got my first decent paycheck from my second job.
Ross | 05-Jan-07 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
almost all of my friends and myself had both their parents working full time to earn a living while we were growing up. if my parents were still at work and i wasn’t at school my grandparents looked after me, as was the case with most of my friends as well.
i’m not suggesting a grandparent should be relied on, because lets face it some are unable to responsibly care for a child at their age or simply have no desire to.
accidents happen, and planned parenthood isn’t always possible but if you want children and want to make good money you have to be willing to work hard, sometimes for extended periods away from your family.
henry johnson | 03-Dec-07 at 4:23 pm | Permalink
all of you seem to forget that the principal does not exist.
Saskboy | 03-Dec-07 at 4:49 pm | Permalink
Henry, that doesn’t make any sense. Please explain or I’ll assume you’re just spam.
==
“When the US$ crashes from the Iraq War debt, we could end up with our currency at par, or even a more valuable C$.”
Didn’t take even 11 months for my prediction to come true. Now the American minimum wages look really pathetic compared to Saskatchewan’s $7.95/h. So many Americans could make a huge wage increase by working at McDonalds for $8.20/h here, without doing any additional work!
henry johnson | 07-Dec-07 at 10:22 am | Permalink
An old banker told me 30 years ago that the principal does not exist. He told me that I would not understand the concept for at least 20 years. He was right. When is the last time you can remember gaining wealth in the form of real tangible items? I am sure you understand 0-reserve lending. I am also sure you know that the paper currency or digital entries do not exist. Ask for gold or silver or firewood or food to be the payment on the next transaction you participate in. The outcome of that request will be novel. henry