RickW

Wow, I cannot remember a time when I have seen a written passage so taken out of context and skewed to present a different perspective as you did. Good job.

I am certain that you already realize this but......rudeness, aggressiveness, etc. are characteristics of a person who is either defending a weak position or one who is incapable of rational debate. The argument that opponents to smoking restrictions use, either openly or conveniently buried in a more altruistic framework, is based on some form of "rights". Since rights imply duties it is an interesting, albeit weak, argument that those who desire a healthy living environment have a somewhat abject duty to protect the rights of those who do not.

I don't think that a racist need be religiously driven. There are a lot of reasons for racism (ignorance, jealousy, mental incompetence, etc.). The religious argument may have held more water 30+ years ago but today it is only one cause in many from my perspective. I expect there are a number of racially intolerant atheists. Who knows why he said anything? Maybe he is a racist idiot or maybe he was a drunken moron who was so pissed-off at being caught that he attacked the police officer personally (weak argument, but possible nonetheless).

I have to be honest - I don't really believe that anyone "earns" $10M per year. I would love to see the substantiated "return" on that investment (as prepared by an objective and qualified financial analyst). Not to be included as substantive evidence - ROI, RI, EVA, and all of the other bastardized accounting-based measures. The reason for the middle-class lies in social equity and capitalism cannot survive without some measure of that. The wider the wealth gap the greater the general unrest in the absence of a significant middle-class population. The fact that individual debt ratios are exceedingly high has less to do with the middle-class per se than with individual greed and selfishness permeating western culture. The only people not in debt are those that have no credit availability. Wealthy people understand the value of leverage and are far more apt to end up on the better end of it.

Fair enough. It is reasonable to state that the market economy is based on return maximization. It is also a fact that senior management in widely held public corporations can wield considerable influence, if not control in some cases, over executive compensation plans. It is these same people that are supposedly working in the best interests of the shareholders. The conflict here is readily determinable and documented "ad nauseam" and has been attributed to many of the great frauds of our time (re: options and Enron - also debatable I suppose). Regardless, I am not really disagreeing with you. Many people are driven by greed/materialism and this is probably best epitomized in the corporate culture to some degree. Morals would be a nice counterweight once in a while though.......

No offense or anything but I am curious. If you can double your income (assuming that the level of risk is acceptable) as an entrepreneur and your predicted future retirement income is acceptable at your current income level, what type of benefits could you not profitably cover with the marginal increase in income from self-employment? If you are business-oriented than you can probably relate to the corporation as a nexus of contracts. When you are employed with a corporation you have entered into a contract of employment and the "benefits" are part of that contract, generally in lieu of current cash flow. It would seem logical that a corporation would be legally bound to honour all of the terms of that contract, including any future cash flows that are fundamentally inherent to the contract. Your "piece of the pie" should be based on your contribution. In the recent past you would be very hard-pressed to identify many corporate executives that have contributed at a level that would positively correlate to their final compensation.