Opinion: Stupid salaries

But the real question is, why is anyone worth that amount of moolah for just doing their job?

No disrespect to Mr Ellison, but we reckon almost any tech CEO could have run the shop instead and still made a profit, for a salary around a million or so. Okay, let's say our mystery CEO has expensive tastes so we'll pay $5m for his services. That still saves the company $80m.

In fact, why do we give these corporate high flyers any particular salary amount at all? What we should really do is give them a no-limit AmEx card and just let them pay for everything they need – and want – on the card, with the company taking the frequent flyer points to buy plane rides for the rest of the staff who need to travel.

The point is, any amount of salary beyond your means to spend it each year is
pretty much meaningless. It goes without saying that our new CEO pay scheme would shovel truckloads of cash into their superannuation funds so they don't need handouts later in life.

But actually paying them all that cash they can't even spend only to end up handing it to the tax man? Or the same amount to their accountants and lawyers in an effort to avoid giving it to the tax man.

Instead, the unlimited credit card idea would save the company a fortune – these guys (and they mostly are guys) work such long hours they never get much chance to spend it anyway. Sounds like a good idea – CEO has every need and every whim catered for and still costs less to feed than they do now.

And if they screw up like most of them seem to, no need to bleat about all the money we wasted on them. Just cut up their credit card. Too easy. Must be a flaw in the argument somewhere…