I think I am supposed to be outraged at the disparity. How can they justify the money?

A new report says Canada’s top 100 CEOs make, on average, 246 times what an average worker does. Or to put it another way, a half an hour into the new year they had already made more money than the average worker will make in the full 366 days of 2024.

For some this will, I am sure, be a call to arms, to rail against the disparity of income in our country. Maybe there will be a march on Toronto’s Bay Street, the center of corporate Canada.

I took the news with a shrug. So what?

Yes, the millions being paid to Canadian corporate executives seem obscene, but that’s one of the aspects of a free market. Presumably these men and women are considered worth it by their employers. They are paid the big bucks to stop them from jumping ship to another employer.

At least they have a track record. There are a lot of 18-year-old hockey players making a million dollars a year who have yet to prove they can do the job. It’s a free market, and employers pay what they feel they have to.

I understand the outrage on the part of those who are on the lower end of the pay scale. I’ve been there.

My first job, at McDonald’s, I was paid $1.12 an hour. That was the entry wage back then. My first office job paid me $300 a month.

In both those jobs though there was opportunity to advance, to earn more money, if I wanted to. There was no upper limit. The millions were there if I wanted to work hard enough to get them. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.

So I’m not outraged that some people are making huge salaries. I’m not even envious. The only thing stopping me from working hard to get to that level was me. And I have no regrets.

While high salaries don’t concern me, low ones do. Pay the guys and girls at the top well – but it is perhaps more important to ensure those at the lowest levels of an organization earn a living wage. In times of high inflation and rising prices, companies should ensure that their employees can make ends meet.

Cutting salaries at the top might look good from a public relations perspective, but in a large organization the savings would mean only pennies for those on the bottom rung. The question is, in a capitalist system, can those at the top who are making the millions understand the needs at those on the bottom?

If they can’t, then maybe they don’t deserve the big bucks.