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> So in other words: It no longer requires any malice to pay this way, as it's just a cultural norm in the business world.

Sure. But I don't think this is a sufficient defense — at the extremes, cultural norms can result in horrific things even though individual actors may not be motivated by malice.

> By the way, it's also a cultural norm in the US to complain about the lack of generosity among those richer than you, and yet spend almost 100% of your salary helping yourself, when you could just as easily spend it on those less fortunate.

There's definitely an incongruity between people's expectations of those above them and what they contribute themselves. We should all give more! But even if I were to donate 100% of my salary, it would barely dent things for those 500 employees.

When we complain about people above us, we're (usually) not chastising individuals but calling for systemic solutions to these issues. The overarching goal isn't for people to donate more of their resources, but to structure things in a more equitable way so that people don't rely on individual generosity in the first place.

> But even if I were to donate 100% of my salary, it would barely dent things for those 500 employees.

There's a lot more people like you than billionares in the world, though.

_but the billionaire's have MOST of the money_

............ THAT'S THE PROBLEM

I'm sorry? This seems rather incoherent. Most income in the US does not in fact go to the 1%. (A greatly disproportionate amount does, of course - about 20% - as expected from an exponential distribution)

And if you're talking about wealth... Well, having all the world's billionares give up their money at once wouldn't have much of a positive impact either. (The 1% in the US - not exactly billionaires, $10,000,000 puts you there - had about 35% of US wealth in 2007)

Agreed, and people like me should donate more! But can we agree that to whatever degree the extreme upper class disproportionately controls the country's wealth, they should also disproportionately shoulder the burden of helping those beneath them?

As far as I'm aware, they already do disproportionately shoulder that burden - not just disproportionately to their proportion of the population, but also relative to their share of the country's income. What level of disproportionality is sufficient for you?

> Sure. But I don't think this is a sufficient defense — at the extremes, cultural norms can result in horrific things even though individual actors may not be motivated by malice.

At which point you are better served by targeting the cultural norm and the harm it does, rather than shaming the individuals following it as malicious. Not only is it more accurate, but it's more effective.

> When we complain about people above us, we're (usually) not chastising individuals but calling for systemic solutions to these issues.

I wish this was the case, but 99% of the rhetoric I see is chastising individuals.

> Unless you're at the bottom, you're also at the top as far as people less fortunate than you are concerned.

Analyzing this situation in terms of a qualitatively homogeneous property differing between people only in magnitude (income or wealth) is a mistake, in my opinion. (And so is taking a psychological approach.)

The most important thing the people at the ‘top’ have here is not any particular amount of money or income, but a radically different relationship to labor and the workplace than the mass of people who work under them. They have special powers (e.g., the power to set wages) and their income comes not only from producing things or providing services using their brains and muscles, but through owning and managing capital. At the very peak of the top, there are owners of capital of whom virtually no management at all is required.

It's because there are people, and of necessity a minority of them, in such a position at all, that the interests of society (as well as its privileges) are divided in such a way as to produce the inequality we have.

When wage laborers _do_ have control or input over things like wages, we _don't_ see the same enormous gaps between the highest and lowest paid employees at those firms. And in the case of that more agreeable outcome, too, the cause is not psychological— it's not that wage laborers are kinder or more generous people than executives, but that their position entails certain interests which are different from those of executives, and given the chance they will guide the firms they work at accordingly.

I don't disagree with you that the system itself has issues.

But the comments here are primarily attacking the "greed" of people richer than them, who would rather spend more money on themselves than on those in need. They're making a psychological argument, and so I am responding in kind by pointing out that these very complainers are hypocritically spending their paychecks the same way: on themselves, not on those in need.

Fair enough.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what pay inequality looks like for top earners. This isn't about using pay to buy luxury items like iPhones vs putting that money to charity. This is about people stuffing bank accounts with more money than they'll be able to use in their lifetimes because the generations of executives that came before them made it acceptable to take a disproportionate cut of the earnings from a business.

Businesses _shouldn't_ exist for the purpose of making the executive team and the shareholders rich at the expense of the employees. American dream or not, businesses serve a purpose in _society_ not just the tiny fraction of society who have the skills to start and run the business.

The goal now is to make executives and shareholders disgustingly rich, and use the government to subsidize the underpaid workforce that generates that wealth. We've created a socialist state for corporations.