Dave Mundt writes:

Hum...I don't know if *I* am the "prior comment" here or not.
I suspect I am. In any case, let me touch on this a bit, too. When
I said "extreme" I was actually thinking more of some of the trend
towards black and white thinking as discussed above. However, I have
also spoken out with concern about the increasing disparity between
the lowest paid job in a given company and the highest paid job. It
makes no real sense for there to be a 50x or more difference between
the lowest and highest paid jobs. The main result of this is that it
fuels the trend of society in general to have more and more folks
drifting into poverty from what used to be the "Middle Class". I
would suggest that it would be BRIGHTER for the companies to do more
to pump up the pay of the lower ranks and lower the pay of the higher
ranks a bit.

Yes. Does it make sense--and we're not talking 50 times here--for a company to
pay its chairman 50 million bucks in a money losing year, while the guy
emptying trash baskets gets 18 grand even though he does his job magnificently?

Not to me it doesn't.

Do I advocate the government using taxes to do this.
Emphatically, NO! Money to a politician is like crack to an addict.
It becomes the center of their lives, and, it does not matter how much
they have, they always need more. What good does it for anyone for
the goverment to take (as an example) a million bucks from one guy,
keep $900,000 of it for their own programs, and, "give back" $100,000
to folks in poverty? As we have seen time and time again over the
years, way too much of that cash ends up in the pockets of the "fat
cats" again through lucrative governmental contracts, double dealing
and padded billing.

What doesn't stop in government pockets tends to shift over to the pockets of
their pals.

Charlie Self
"Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen." Ambrose Bierce, The
Devil's Dictionary