I am always puzzled by discussions about people who have too much money. My life is wonderful, I have no reason to complain about others.
The people complaining are clearly expressing envy and relying on an ancient tribal desire to have equality among all the tribal members.
The playing field of complaints about people having too much money is not a level playing field. That makes the issue of understanding it more difficult.
While there is an endless array of complaints about senior executives being paid in the tens of millions and more extreme complaints about financial figures earning in the hundreds of millions, there is no comparable complaining about celebrities or sports figures earning comparable amounts of money. A good basketball player can earn the same as a chief executive who runs a $10 billion company with 15,000 employees.
I begin the blog with the mention of winners of the lottery. There is a visible absence of complaints about their level of earnings.
So what is going on? I cannot understand it.
Executives frequently have managerial responsibility for thousands of employees and the level of responsibility is very heavy. The celebrity status is pretty much luck much like the lottery. Both of which resemble inherited money.
Inherited money does generate some envy but nothing comparable to executive pay or financial figure payments.
The president of the US and the rest of the envy crowd seem to put financial people with large earnings at the top of their hate list. In most cases these people are dealing with billions of dollars and making reasonable or lucky decisions about their investment. They are taking a tiny percentage of their success in payment.
The playing field for envy does not make sense to me at this point.