But He Sure Sounds Good Saying It

I listen to very little radio nowadays thanks to my iPod which is loaded with music and podcasts. The other day I needed to check on local weather/road conditions so I turned on an AM station and was immediately hit with:

"I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message."
"This administration has further divided Wall Street from Main Street. You've got CEOs who are making more in 10 minutes than ordinary workers are making in a year."

WHAT??????????

OK. This must be some kind of test to see if you're smarter than a 5th grader or something. So, here we go folks - it's fairly simple math.

Let's use the worst case scenario:
The minimum wage in Ohio is $7.00 per hour X 2080 hours per year = $14,560.00 annually.

Now take $14,560.00 X 6 (10 minute segments in an hour) X 2080 hours per year (though it is doubtful that any CEO works a 40 hour week - most are in the 60 plus range) = $181,708,800.00 annually.

According to Forbes magazine there are indeed CEO's who made in excess of $181,000,000.00 a year. In the entire country there are exactly - three. Not exactly the hoard of money grubbing Wall Street types you were expecting? The average US CEO makes around $15,000,000.00 per year acording to the AFL-CIO. Not a bad payday but certainly not what Mr. Obama would have us believe.

Now, if we use the average hourly wage instead of the minimum wage as shown above the figures look like this:

$17.50 US average hourly wage X 2080 = $36,400.00 annually
$36,400.00 X 6 X 2080 = $454,272,000.00 annually

According to Forbes there is exactly ONE CEO that makes this kind of money - Steve Jobs of Apple.

Hey, wait a minute - isn't Jobs the one that's responsible for keeping me from listening to the radio in the first place - perhaps so I wouldn't hear Mr. Obama's message? And what about all those campaign contributions Jobs' wife has made to Obama? Shouldn't Mr. Obama return the contributions since Jobs made over $646,000,000.00 in just one year? Or $51,762.00 every ten minutes.

Let's just call this what it really is - class warfare - pure and simple - down and dirty. Set up a wealthy straw man and knock him down without even the benefit of facts or figures to back up your claims. But he sure sounds good saying it.