Got to thinking more about that Wal-Mart story: Here’s a snippet from the IBT article:
Incidentally, it would take the average worker around 750 years to earn the $23.2 million that CEO Mike Duke earned in 2012, approximately 1,034 times more than the company’s average worker.
I suspect that Crecencio suspects that our household income is higher by some multiple than his. And I suspect his employees suspect that his is some multiple higher than theirs’. I don’t suspect, however, that Crecencio nor his workers resent the signers of their paychecks good fortune. Of course the multiple in either instance comes nowhere near 1,034 times. Then again, neither Crecencio nor myself possess the skills to manage the largest distributor of low-cost consumer goods (and, btw, the largest single employer) on the planet. That job is reserved for the rarest and, therefore, the highest paid talent.
Speaking of high-paid talent, according to Forbes, Steve Jobs’s average yearly income from 2002 to 2007 was $130 million. That would be 3,250 times the average pay of today’s Apple Store genius—and, by the way, many many times more than yours truly’s. Which doesn’t bother me in the least, as I type this on my iPhone while waiting in the car for my wife while she patronizes Bed Bath and Beyond—a retailer (not nearly the largest on the planet mind you) that paid its CEO, a rare talent for sure, $5.5 million more than Wal-Mart paid its last year.