Well said Stezza.

It's a lot harder to agree with socialism once you realise you are part of the evil 'wealthy' classes exploiting the poor.

Trying to regulate wealth in the way suggested is hugely problematic for one simple reason - what constitutes wealth is an entirely relative idea.

Of course we all feel exploited and under paid when we compare ourselves with the richest FEW. But shouldn't we be feeling even more strongly that we are overpaid and privileged by comparison with the poorest MANY?

Just think how commonly actors and sportsmen (who, like CEOs, are often paid extraordinary amounts of money for their work) and yet these same people are often heard complaining about others earning more.

When you boil it down, that's all socialism really is: people complaining about others earning more.

To those socialists who stubbornly can't get past the politics of envy, by all means go seize the assets of some wretched CEO/actor/sportsman, but don't kid yourself you're doing it for any other reason than envy, and don't cry foul, when you're the victim of someone poorer than you.

Valerie is hardly arguing for socialism when she argues that no-one should earn more than a million dollars. I'd personally put the figure at, say, $300,000 - let the CEOs who turn a company around bask in the sheer glory of having done so if such financial reward is not enough in itself. Of course there has to be incentive for hard work and enterprise, but what we don't want is a severely unequal society. Let the differential between the basic wage and the highest salary be no more than a factor of ten - from $30,000 (or whatever the basic wage is now) and $300,000.

Kalin1'
just because you rationalise that the absurd and obscene division of wealth is objected to only on the grounds of envy, doesn't make it so. I don't see why anyone needs or deserves redundant wealth, and I certainly don't envy such cretins, who measure life in such vulgar terms. The accumulation of wealth for its own sake comes at an enormous human and environmental cost and is ultimately unsustainable. Moreover there is nothing more divisive, socially, than this paradigm that puts such competitiveness before all else. And it does come first!
If the preservers of this vial status quo have nothing to offer against reform, bar that it's all relative so we might as well leave it the way it is, then their appetite for wealth is no match for their poverty of intellect!
The million dollars Mitchell suggests above should not be sneezed at. What does any individual want with more than that? And what inalienable right does he have to it (certainly it's rarely earned, and never without luck), especially while the other half starves! This is just bloody-minded (and bloody-realist) ideological clap-trap. What the hell is wrong with a little modesty in human affairs?
According to Jesus, "the more you have, the more it has you"!

Surely your proposal would simply lead to a further 'brain drain' in this country? If someone's business acumen is valued at well over a million dollars by shareholders of overseas companies, why would they bother sticking around and using that ability to steer Australian businesses?

If shareholders - ultimately, the owners of businesses and employers of their CEOs - are unhappy with the performance of their bosses, they have opportunities to voice that unhappiness at an AGM each and every year. They have opportunities to elect directors and to vote them out. The reality, though, is that the majority of shareholders are content to enjoy their dividends, use their shares for equity and allow those well-paid people who have got where they are because of what they could do to run their business for them.

The 'rob the rich' mentality seems a little sick to me, especially when we are robbing a meritocracy rather than an aristocracy.

When the French Guillotined all the "too big to fail' aristocrats, the threats of:

No Jobs & massive unemployment
No food production
Investor losses
anarchy
Commercial cessation

all failed to come true.

Why? Because its ordinary people who ran France. So it is too in Australia and a bunch of overpaid leeches at the top of banking, corporate and government posts
really are telling PORKIES when they say they are "too big to fail" and in need of multi million dollar pay rises.

In fact, if Australia is to find its true place in the world then anyone who claims to be too big to fail must have their salary and remunerations CUT to no more than the salary of the Prime Minister.

Until that comes to pass we are all going to be pushed into failure while CEO's immigrate us into extinction and become 'Gods' - in their own minds.

Some forty years ago large Australian manufacturing companies had a points system (Hayes?) which meant that an income range was set for each supervisory and management position. Each salary range included a base amount and a dollar range for each point.

It was accepted that each step in level should be about 40% above the level below and that about five or six levels were all that was necessary ot manage a large organisation. The Roman Catholic Church was quoted as an example of being successful with only four full steps in the ladder. Six levels with 40% increase per level gives a highest to lowest ratio of less than eight so top salaries would in today's terms be about $400,000.

Peter Drucker, a management guru of that time, in one book mentioned a study that showed that a business with wide salary ranges was doomed to fail in the long term. I assume that is because co-operation in management is more productive that jealousy.

Can anyone imagine the steel industry in the sixties being relatively strike free and successful if strong unions realised that the CEO was being paid 150 times a furnaceman's wages.