Well. I disagree with you.
You post that a $200,000 salary is "quite modest by any standard."
I think a $200,000 salary is extremely well paid especially when you add on top of that all the other benefits and bonuses and expense accounts. I challenge you to go out and find any regular working person and see if they think $200,000 is not an EXTREMELY NICE salary when they are struggling to make enough money to put food on the table and clothes on the kids backs. By their standard, $200,000 is extremely well paid. But I guess you are in the group who ignores their standards - even though they make up the MAJORITY of the people in the country. They do not count because they do not have the power like the executives who sit in high positions on company boards etc.. These execs sit in their positions and snow people into paying them ridiculously high salaries when they don't produce, but they still get the salaries.
$200,000 is enough for ANY ol Joe to live on VERY NICELY unless they want to start going and playing who can buy the most ridiculously expensive shower curtain and the most unworn expensive shoes or something - that is TOTAL GLUTTONY, and to use those kinds of antics as a measuring stick for a "modest" salary is wayyyyy out of line and is what is wrong with the corporate portion of our society nowadays.
ANYONE can live nicely off $200,000/year and not have to worry about much, so it is much better than a "modest" salary.
A "modest" salary is one paid to the regular folks who are lucky to pull in $35,000 to 40,000/year - THAT is a "modest" salary. And then these folks have to pay for everything themselves, they do not have benefits and expense accounts to take care of a lot of their living expenses and travels.
IMO anything over $60,000/year is a GOOD salary (better than "modest"), and anything over $150,000/year is a darn good salary (wayyy over "modest). Anyone making over $150,000/year should feel very lucky and blessed to have such prosperity.
These corporate guys need to start learning to produce for their salaries instead of just distributing these large funds to themselves and hide behind the curtain of "well, all the other executives of all the other companies who cannot seem to bring value to share price make ridiculously high salaries regardless of their performance, so of course, I should be able to do it too." This is just total irresponsibility, gluttony and a bunch of bunk to defend it as appropriate.
