We never will be equal if we want to be honest we often prosper on the sweat of the true poor.
We most of us, have imports from China , and while income is not good it is better than they once had, still living standards differ greatly.
Rechtub, did you give much thought to that post, tax avoidance is much more in those who earn such incomes even legal investments that are tax relief.
You must run a high price butchers, seems you dislike the average worker so no cheap snags I bet.
An answer to this difference in incomes is not going to be easy.
I truely ask why we can not re craft some social welfare payments.
How hard would it be to stop contracting out local government jobs and put those on welfare in those jobs using welfare as part wages so costs would be an asset to ratepayers.

*No one is worth hundreds of millions as a CEO.It is the upper and middle managers who do all the hard work.*

First point Arjay, nobody claimed that anyone was worth hundreds
of millions of $, so please stop the verbal masturbation :)

Second point Arjay, don't give up your day job, for you would last
about 5 seconds in the corporate world. Investors would run a mile,
when you started talking, including me.

Upper and middle managers should work hard, for they are extremely
well paid. But they still basically do what they are told. Ultimate
responsibility remains with the CEO. If he/she gets it wrong, they
will soon take a walk, their career largely over.

Now let me give you an example of why the CEO matters. Every time
I see Marius Kloppers of BHP, he reminds me of a schoolboy, not
at all of a CEO. Yet he clearly has the smarts!

The results are out for iron ore sales last year and their prices.
FMG sold at the benchmark, so made very little profit. Marius,
through a clever marketing strategy, which is his baby, achieved
around 10% extra. Multiply that by 150 million or so tonnes and
you are talking an extra billion $ profit for BHP and for Australia.

So how much should he be paid, for earning BHP an extra billion$?

I've always favoured a heavily progressive Scandinavian style tax system. Years ago at a lecture from a Swedish Prof of finance he informed me that the tax rate above about 200K was around 85%. This is many years ago now and I believe their tax system has changed quiet dramatically. But at that time it did lead to a very equal society where virtually everyone was able to live with some degree of comfort. I'd like to see a similar system applied in Australia, with say a minimum wage of 60K and a maximum of say 200K.
It's very sad in my opinion to see Australia going down the competition pathway, where lower paid workers are discarded so easily.
If anyone has read the book "Happiness, lessons from a new sciencë" by London school of economics prof R Layard, he goes into alot of detail of how we could live in a much better society if we had a highly progressive tax system. It takes away much of the fight to be better than others.
Seems individual happiness increases dramatically up to a threshold of about 50K(US) then increases only very marginally after that figure.
I hate to see people poorly paid, but most of all I hate seeing others take advantage of these people.

Yabby, you live in the cybre world of money creation which has nothng to do with real productivity.The reality is that even with two parents working,people today are worse off than 1980.

The banking system has more power than our Govts.When the RBA drops rates ,many of the banks ignore the trends and please themselves.

When I came back from OS in 1980 with nothing, I worked hard and at the end of that yr ,had $20,000.00 for a 20% deposit for a house.This is impossible to do today.The main reason being is that banks have made credit too easily available thus over inflating housing,making ordinary folk debt slaves to over valued assets.

You still don't get it ,do you Yabby?

Ozzie, if we adopted your suggestion of a maximum $200,000, can you imagine the brain drain of all the expertise and talent to places around the world where they would be welcomed with open arms. Just the medical experts alone would leave the health system in tatters.
It would leave a very poor Australia with all the people who work in every section supplying the wealthy, out of work from the arts to building. Sorry, it wouldn't be practical. Believe it or not, we all benefit indirectly from wealthy individuals. It's an unfair world and always will be.

What exactly do these fat cats do with so much money? Even with servants, limos, holiday mansions, firstclass travel, a yacht or two, daily five star restaurant meals, expensive wine etc etc it seems impossible to spend the 10 or 20 million a year some CEOs receive. Notice I did not say "earned". They dont "earn" their money the same way a cook or a cleaner or a clerk does.

Considering many of them receive 200 to 300 times their lowest paid workers who here really believes they work 200 to 300 times harder than the lowest paid? How do they do so? Even if they worked 24 hours a day I cannot see how they could possibly work 200 times harder. Not to mention what's harder? A few years at a posh university then a nice cozy boardroom with copious paper shuffling and the oh so onerous (expense account) lunch meetings or a lifetime of manual labour down a mine or in a factory?

A quote from somewhere that I agree with.

"Now things are so strangely organised at present that it is just the dirty and disagreeable work that men will do cheaply, and consequently there is no great rush to invent machines to take their place. In a free society, on the other hand, it is clear that the disagreeable work will be one of the first things that machinery will be called upon to eliminate".

Wake up people they are ripping off millions that rightfully belongs to the workers.

ozzie mentioned progressive taxation. When that was removed/reduced it became open slather for these gluttons to increase their own remuneration and it is not suprising that their greed has taken over and they have taken as much as they can get. Power corrupts as they say. Bring back progressive taxation and you remove any incentive for excessive income for parasites with power and control of big business. Whatever happened to the owners (shareholders) having control of what they own? How did the CEOs take over as if they are the owners and not the shareholders?