I just saw a salary table that showed the highest paid CEO got $253 million last year, and each of the top ten got more than $100 million.
Compare this to the salaries of our politicians in Congress. Rank and file members get $174,000. President Joe Biden’s salary is $400,000. Add allowances and his wife’s salary as a teacher and they may have made $500 thousand.
How do you explain why more of our politicians don’t leave and enter business? Some of them were CEOs before becoming politicians. I hate to even think it, but could the politicians somehow be paid by the industrialists on the side — nontaxable? The legislation they pass certainly suggests it! (E.g., the U.S.’s biggest earners pay by far the lowest taxes in the world.)
Trump, who I doubt has ever given a penny to charity — though he’s received billions to fund his campaigns — is desperate to get elected again and move up Forbes richest Americans list — down which he has recently slipped.
Business executives seem eager to retire and enjoy a normal life when they hit 55. Politicians want to go on forever — even though their life seems to be one long rat fight. I can’t think of anyone rattier than Trump who cares absolutely nothing for the general population and other politicians. All he cares about is how rich he is. Maybe that’s why he seems willing to betray the U.S. for Putin — reportedly the richest man in the world. Silly me, all these years I thought Putin was blackmailing Trump because he couldn’t keep his trousers on at the 2013 Miss World contest in Moscow!
Frank Fish, Taylorsville
