the people getting many millions in salaries simply can't be worth what they're getting paid. If you started the company, sure, why not? If you actually built the **** thing from the ground up, you deserve every penny you get (I believe that Sam Walton earned every **** penny he and his offspring will ever receive). But when you look at what certain people actually DO for a company, vs. how much they get paid, you start seeing things not add up properly.
Let us take the CEO of McDonald's who made 18 million one year. He has 1.5 million employees under him. Divide his salary by the number of employees and you get 12 dollars. It is quite easy to justify his salary.
You didn't justify his salary. You gave me a number the CEO doesn't control divided by his income. It was actually probably the most ridiculous "justification" of anything I've ever seen. You did absolutely nothing for your argument.
Tell me what he DOES. I'm talking about what he DOES. If he PERSONALLY leads those 1.5 million employees each day, has massive conference calls with the stores each day to give them pep talks, etc, etc, then he deserves his salary. THAT is justification.
http://www.steverrobbins.com/articles/ceojob#part1
Looking at that, we can see that CEO means you do alot for the company. Or are supposed to. Anyway, looking at what they do, the actual amount of work they put in isn't worth even 18 million. 7 figure salary? Maybe. Higher 6 figure salary? Most definitely. After all, what they do affects the whole company. They deserve to be well paid. But we're joking ourselves if we can say with a straight face 18 million dollars a year is how much they "earn". That's beyond "well paid", and far beyond "comfortable".
Now, I looked up your "18 million" assertion. Know what his "base salary" was for that year? 1.4 million dollars. Now THAT number sounds about right. If you run a company (especially a large company like McDonalds), you should get around that for the work you put in. You know what the rest was? "Performance bonuses". So he "earned" about 8 times his "base salary"? I'm glad McDonald's is doing well, but Jesus. That seems a little excessive. And how much in "performance bonuses" did those lower than him get? The trickle-down of these bonuses stops somewhere, probably just shy of the people actually serving the food. But I'm sure if you cut those bonuses down, you could pay those who actually interact with the customers on a personal level a little bit more to work with. An employee who has fewer financial worries is a happier employee!