Greed

I have an extreme dislike for greedy people. Especially people who epitomize corporate greed. There's a merge going on at my company, and I'm getting to experience first hand how the lure and temptation of money and increased profit margins drives these people. They set unreal deadlines and expect the "real" workers to do whatever it takes to meet these deadlines. It happens all the time, I know, but in this case the push to get the product out according to the timeline (created by executives and investors) will have an adverse affect on quality. And these people that are driven by this profit factor are already either millionaires or otherwise extremely well compensated people. And those doing the real work are just the average joes like you and I.

So I was reading Fortune this morning, and saw some CEO's pays.

Highest Paid:
John Wilder - TXO - $55.2 mil
Robert Toll - Toll Brothers - $44.3 mil
Ray Irani - Occidental Petroleom - $41.7 mil (wonder why gas prices are so high?)
Bob Nardelli - Home Depot - $39.5 mil
Edward Zander - Motorola - $38.9 mil

Lowest Paid:
Richard Kinder - Kinder Morgan Energy - $1
Steve Jobs - Apple Computer - $1
Jeff Bezos - Amazon.com - $81,840
Warren Buffett - Berkshire Hathaway - $311,000
Paul Anderson - Duke Energy - $365,296

I have to say, when you are already filthy rich, do you need to get paid $55,200,000 per year? And I have to hand it to the lowest paid guys. Granted, they are all filthy rich as it is, but at least they are showing some signs of being human.