I believe that. Family connections matter far more than how hard you work.

I don't think it's unfair, or that there's too much capitalism, but it's the nature of the system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU

edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that.

Well, look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple. Regardless of whether he would've done that if he was paid less, how many workers was he worth? The natural follow-up question is then, why not pay them what they're worth?

One reason CEOs are paid so much is to prevent them from making short-term decisions that optimize their stock price at the expense of long-term planning. If their entire compensation is tied to the stock price, there's no incentive for any CEO to try to do better than increase the stock price at any cost.

It's not at all about how hard you work. It's about working smart, i.e. working on the right things.

Some people don't get to work on the right things. Hell, most people don't get to work on the right things, by virtue of not being born in the right social class, the right skin color, the right neighbourhood, the right family.

Look, while there are enough people getting money funneled to them at the top for sure work very hard. But those are not the seriously rich. Those are the subalterns, they earn about seven or eight figures a year and work hard for it.

The seriously rich get to chose how much they want to work, if they want to work at all. Surely you know that?

Edit: sarcasm is best perceived when the argument leads ad adsurdum. Now people at the top working very hard and taking risks happens all the time and your "Surely you don't believe that?" could have been just an arrogant attitude, so your sarcasm was hard to spot. But I'm glad to hear it was just sarcasm :)

'Seven or eight figures' is seriously rich.

"Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that."

I don't think that's obvious, but let's stipulate that it's true.

While there may be no amount of work that justifies it, there is an amount of ownership that justifies it.

Not everyone is a up-the-ladder CEO that gets placed into a firm and then rent-seeks for a few years while waiting for a golden parachute. Some people founded their firms and reap the financial gains directly from what they've built - and if that is 400 or 500 or 600x what the janitor makes, so be it.

The issue is not the sarcasm, the issue is that there is now no way to differentiate that sarcasm from a non-sarcastic opinion on HN, because you can find people legitimately believing this.