Just how important are leaders, what are they worth, and can we afford ones that are open ended and unattended at any cost?

There is a division between administrators and those administrated, between paper shufflers and the producers of actual goods and services that is ever widening in this country, and we must do something about it. There is a growing sense that while actual producers of goods and services are busily distracted on the front lines of the fight for survival of corporations and governments, executives, administrators and bureaucrats are taking the money and running, that those in control of the money tend to band together and support one another so they can stay in power and collectively gravitate toward sucking the rest of us dry. It is more of that serf-royalty syndrome. A sense that we need led and done to. It's ok I guess, if we are lazy and complacent enough to let it happen, we deserve it. Unfortunately, people tend to let things go until they get fed up, then they blow a gasket like that mob did in Los Angeles, a childish reaction that serves no benefit to anyone. Administrators have grown into such a large and ruthless group, and, rather than be appalled and repulsed by their behavior, so many of the rest of us have just joined the mad, ruthless pursuit to join them, that the very planet is endangered by the rat race. We need to establish laws and traditions that at least break up the chain linked between big business and big government periodically. How on earth can a company justify paying ten million dollars to a corporate executive for a year in which the company lost seventeen billion dollars and laid off thirty thousand employees ? How on earth can our illustrious leaders vote themselves a salary in excess of one hundred thousand dollars while our country is going hundreds of billions of dollars deeper in debt each year and the average income in the US is under twenty thousand dollars a year(2012 update:  That's a 20 year old number, it may have risen a bit) ?

If one has a small company with a small group of administrators, all willing to go down with the ship financially if the company goes broke, then he or she should be allowed to pass out whatever salaries he or she pleases. But if a company becomes a big corporation, with boards of directors and all that stuff, involved with placing stockholders and/or taxpayers money at risk, not to mention thousands of employees, then those at risk should be allowed to place limits and conditions on administrators salaries.

Quite frankly, I'm so ignorant of the processes of operating big corporations, I hesitate to forward any suggestions of what to do about it. But I bet I can find some great folks with some really good ideas, and we will come up with a solution.   For starters though, I'd set a maximum salary for CEO's and other administrators of publicly traded companies to 15 times the average salary of employees in the company.  In case you believe the more administrators are paid the better job they will do, have a look at this.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=related

Government leaders should be viewed as servants of the people whose service is performed primarily as a duty to God and Country and all that. Their salaries should be a stipend that helps them survive while in office, but certainly not enough to inspire them to want to keep the job for life. It should be controlled by the people rather than some strange body obscurely selected by those government officials whose salaries are at stake, and it should be directly related to the average income of the American taxpayers. Frankly, I'd like to see something similar to what I propose to do for the duration of my administration be made a permanent fixture.