If you're the highest paid CEO in the United States...

[MetaTrope]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131568-c,electronics/article.html">are you still progressive?

Steve Jobs' US$1 salary was dwarfed by $646 million in stock compensation for 2006, Forbes magazine said Friday, ranking the Apple Inc. CEO as the highest-paid executive in the U.S.

In its annual CEO paycheck scorecard of America's 500 biggest companies, Forbes said the $646.6 million for Jobs was more than twice the compensation of the next person on the list: Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum, who took home $321.6 million -- the bulk of it from exercised stock options.

Nice work if you can get it, I guess. I wonder how much the drones at the iPod store earn?

[leftofthedial]

1. The capitalist system could not be more perfectly designed to destroy democracy

[WinkyDink]

2. Capitalists hate democracy. That's pretty much a "given". If they could get away with

out-right slavery, they would.

[Lurking Dem]

6. A "given"? Really?

[Captain Angry]

3. Guess what his tax rate is.

That isn't salary, it's stock.

If I recall correctly, if he sells the stock after one year of ownership his tax rate will be 15%.

[Lurking Dem]

5. That is the current capital gains tax.

Because that money has not been sitting idle for a year. It was invested. It went to creating jobs, research and development, trade, etc.

[Lurking Dem]

4. Everyone knows rich people

can't possibly be liberal.

:sarcasm:

[alfredo]

7. They get paid well enough to hold down on turn over. Because the

stores are in well to do areas, they have to pay workers enough so they can survive living in the area. Anyway, they have to pay well to get the tech savvy staff Apple Stores demand.

When Apple was struggling back in the late nineties, Jobs took very little compensation. It has been just recently that he has started taking some profit. When he started Apple's stock was in the low teens, the product line was boring, the OS showing signs of age.

AAPL closed at 100.8 on friday. I believe the stock split 2:1 a few years ago. If it hadn't the price would be even higher. Not all CEO's earn their pay packages, but Jobs has.