Culture Notes - I

The appetites we have are all perhaps natural, but do they rule our lives?  Should they?  Here's an example from western culture.

Question: How much is enough?
Starbucks former CEO, now Executive Chairman, is worth $3+ Billion and gets paid $21.7 Million each year.

He's in the top echelon for income in the US, and there are thousands more like him; folks with incomes in the $millions annually.

The lower half of individual wage earners in the US average $12.7k, net (after taxes).  That's the lower economic 50%, 80 million working folks who pay taxes. (Per SSA wage statistics for 2015)

Households depend on more than one income, The lower 90% of U.S. households average $30.7k net (after taxes).  A full-time Starbucks store supervisor nets about $21.6k.

There's a measure of validity in rewarding a workman for his labor, of course.  There's also the issue of exploiting the labor of others for personal gain.  Is there anything wrong with the current GAP between the extraordinarily rich and the labor-force that produced their wealth? Is the greed we see on Wall Street and elsewhere okay, or is it deadly?

Giving government the job of regulating ethical business standards hasn't worked well.  Curious where else that particular failure has spilled over? 

______________________________________   
Consider The Nation or perhaps The GAP