Is an actor worth $50 million? If you would listen to the Occupy meat heads, they will tell you that no corporate executive is worth that much. In fact, most of these never-do-well-living-on-daddy's-paycheck types will say that no executive is worth $2 million per year, but actors are a different matter. They are artists and their art must be rewarded otherwise this would be a very dull world painted only in black, white and shades of grey.
Hey, these actors have to work a full six months, sometimes, to earn their money and the rest of the time is taken spending what they earned on new houses, cars, contributions to Democratic candidates and, yes don't forget, their drugs. Downey is an expert in that scene. But doesn't his dealer also need to make a living and doesn't he contribute to the economy? Of course, we cannot forget those little people, his hangers-on who need their piece of the pie.
You see an actor really is a small business, with his staff, his drivers, his caterers, his hairstylist, his lawyers and accountants. He is a small business and shouldn't they also be able to make a living? Shoot, if we cut him down to $500,000 per film, he would have to let go most of these people which would only increase the unemployment!
Would a film be less successful if we only paid him 1% of his current take? We doubt it! Yet, we hear no one on the left side of the political spectrum espousing the greed of the movie stars, because they know that is where their money comes from. For the most part, it does not come from the corporate executive who worked his or her way up to the top giving up family, friends and relationships to crawl their way to the upper echelons. Regardless of the company's successes, the CEO is told that he or she is greedy and only wants for themselves and not for the "little people." Such hypocrisy!
Our point is that most of us will never earn 3% of what Downey does in a short stint on a movie stage. He makes nothing and is only part of the machine that produces a movie. He does not write, direct or edit the movie, he pretends to be someone who is not real. And for this he gets paid outrageous amounts of money. Yet, the CEO who manages millions of employees and trillions of dollars of assets is slammed for getting a salary less than Downey. This is ridiculous.
This is not to mean that Downey is not deserving of the money that he gets. He obviously is a box office attraction who can make a movie successful. Bravo to him. However, we should also reward those men and women who make it to the top and lead their companies to better and better performance. They should be richly rewarded, also.
The US has always rewarded hard work and rising to the top. We will no longer be a world leader if we eliminate the opportunity to grasp of the "gold ring" in ANY field or venture.
Conservative Tom
Robert Downey Jr.'s 'Avengers' Pay To Reportedly Hit $50 Million
Robert Downey Jr. made a lot of money off "The Avengers."
Robert Downey Jr. is prone to making mathematical gestures on the red carpet, but he's going to need more than ten fingers to sift through his payout from "Marvel's The Avengers." According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 47-year-old actor stands to make about $50 million from the film.
Downey's "Avengers" co-stars stand to make a fraction of his earnings, in part because of a savvy deal the "Iron Man" lead reportedly renegotiated, under which he would receive a portion of Marvel's revenue from any future film in which he plays Tony Stark. He allegedly rejiggered the deal when the first "Iron Man" film dialed up $585 million in 2008.
Though Downey's deal is not unheard of for the rarefied circle of Hollywood's biggest names, it's a great deal more than any of his "Avengers" cohorts. Sources say Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner and Mark Ruffalo will each ultimately make $2 million to $3 million from the film.
Marvel has a history of cutting sharp deals. Terrence Howard, who starred with Downey Jr. in the first "Iron Man" film, was reportedly faced with a 50 to 80 percent pay cut for the sequel after the studio learned director Jon Favreau planned to limit his role. Howard's agents smarted, and though it's unknown if he walked out or if Marvel decided to go a different direction, Don Cheadle replaced Howard for the sequel.
"The Avengers" continues to smash through box office records and recently surpassed the $1 billion mark in global earnings, so the $50 million payout is unlikely to put a big dent in Marvel's balance sheet. The film is currently making "Avatar"-type money, a big relief to Disney, which bought Marvel and desperately needed a hit after the crippling loss it suffered on "John Carter."
All this, and yet not one word from you about the Wall Street CEOs who collect hundreds of millions while their bank goes broke, gets billions in tax-payer bailouts, and continues TODAY to do the same things that wrecked the global economy. Not one of them has gone to prison yet for securities fraud. Those are the CEOs that OWS is protesting.
ReplyDelete--David
I know that it serves your political interests to caricature the entire OWS movement as nothing but a bunch of violent, unemployed college students. Several credible studies have been done to outline the demographics of OWS by age, education, employment, and income. Here is a typical survey result…
ReplyDeletehttp://www.statisticbrain.com/occupy-wall-street-statistics-and-demographics/
You can go ahead and try to discredit the source (I don't know why), but there are others that show similar results. The only people who believe that OWS has the demographic profile you portray have never attended an OWS rally in their lives and simply accept the smear campaign against OWS used by Wall Street defenders to distract attention away from what the protests are all about. It is understandable, but reprehensible when you consider the damage that Wall Street has already done to our country and is well-positioned to repeat. Sorry for the rant, but I will not stop so long as Wall Street and their political stooges from both parties and the Federal Reserve run the country into the ground. Vote Ron Paul.
--David
Here is another source that is compares and contrasts the Tea Party with OWS.http://publicreligion.org/research/2011/12/research-note-new-demographic-profiles-of-occupy-wall-street-vs-tea-party-movements/
ReplyDeleteDavid, you need to check your sources before quoting them. The source's numbers do not add up. For example, the work data they quote adds up to 116%. Others don't add to 100% even though they use decimals.
ReplyDeleteWhen I look at data that does not meet a simple overview, like numbers not adding up, it does not pass the smell test and this piece of garbage has been out in the sun way too long.
Also salary numbers only add up to slightly more than 30%.
ReplyDeleteAge is over 120%.
Occupy Wall Street Statistics and Demographics
Category : Demographics Share on Facebook
Statistic Verification
Source: School of Public Affairs
Date Verified: 3.19.2012
Age Data
Percent 25-44 44.5%
Percent 24 and under 23.5%
Percent 35 and older 33%
Percent 45 and older 20%
School Data
College 60.7%
Grad School Educated 29.4%
High school Diploma or Lower 8%
Gender Data
Male 61%
Female 37.5%
Other 1.5%
Ethnicity Data
White 81.2%
Other 7.6%
Hispanic / Latino 6.8%
Asian 2.8%
Black / African American 1.6%
Job Data
Enrolled in School 26.7%
Full time students 10%
Employed Full-Time 52%
Work Part-Time 20%
Unemployed 13.1%
Income Data
Earn Between $50,000 and $80,000 annually 15%
Earn over $75,000 annually 13%
Earn over $150,000 2%
Politics Data
Percent who call themselves Democrats 27.3%
Percent who call themselves Republican 2.4%
Percent who call themselves Independent 70%
Media Engagement Data
Regular Twitter user 29%
Regular Facebook users 66%
Regular YouTube users 74%
Percent that listen to the radio 46%
Still, not a word about Wall Street CEOs, JP Morgan, OTC derivative trades, etc. That is the real issue, not the OWS demographics.
ReplyDeleteBut since you brought it up, the percentages in the categories are not intended to add up to 100% because some of the intervals overlap (e.g., age 25-44 overlaps with 35 or older), so naturally some respondents will be in both categories, which accounts for your total over 100%. That is just the way they chose to present the data to give us alternative ways of conceptualizing the distribution. Likewise, the job data adds to over 100% because, for example, a student with a part-time job would be counted as having two jobs. Similarly, there is no reason to expect income categories to add up to 100%, since they do not report those with incomes under $50,000 (which would include all the students in the survey). What you CAN conclude is that 30% of OWS protesters (like me) earn more than $50K, which flies in the face of your caricature of OWS as nothing but a bunch of violent college students. In that regard, your own link also refutes your OWS caricature and demonstrates my point that the demographic profile of OWS is far less monolithic than the Tea Party on religion, party affiliation, ideology, age, etc.
--David
David,
DeleteJP Morgan lost rouighly 2% of their assets in the derivative problem. They made over 5 trillion and lost three, as far as i can tell that still makes them profitable by over 2 trillion dollars! This is nothing but "blame the banks."
BTW the Volker rule would not have done anything to prevent the loss of the money. The real issue, which is not addressed by Volker of Frank Dodd, is that banks are in too many businesses. They are in insurance, banking, hedging, investments to name a few. Banks should do banking only! Insurance companies should do insurance only! Investment companies ala Merrill Lynch should do investments. We do not need any new rules, we need to re-institute Glass Stegall immediately. It worked for sixty years plus, until we got so smart to think that we could do it better.
Also Damie Dimond earned less than Downey this past year. His total income was something like 23 million and he controlled one of the biggest banks in the world. Downey is way overpaid.
ReplyDeleteHere is something on Glass Steagal. It was killed in 1999, I believe that was in the clinton administration!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/071603.asp#axzz1vWLcWgSn
I agree with this statement…
ReplyDelete"The Volcker Rule is more necessary than ever because the banks have shown their complete lack of regard for fragility of the current economic environment. Making risky trades on the scale that they do is very dangerous no matter the situation but the fact is that we are recovering from a recession right now and the markets are very volatile. I would also argue for changes to the Volcker Rule to close any holes in the net that might have let JPMorgan make the bet even when the Volcker Rule was in effect.
Apparently the banks cannot make intelligent decisions for themselves, therefore, regulation is a necessity and one of the key parts of that regulation should be the Volcker Rule. You would have thought that after the financial crisis, even the banks would be taking less risks and assuming more responsibility. Sadly that is not the case and they should face the consequences."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/607051-reexamining-the-volcker-rule-after-jpmorgan-s-derivatives-loss
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Although they deny it, the JP Morgan trade was clearly a proprietary trade, not a hedge. They were placing a casino bet on a credit default swap index and lost $5 billion. The question is not whether JP Morgan can survive this incident. Next time they might decide to bet on something else and lose even more. They should not be allowed to makes bets with FDIC insured money, because that is where their losses are backed up by tax-payer bailouts. As you say, the sure-fire solution is to go back to Glass-Steagall of 1933. The Wall Street banks will not allow that to happen. They won't even allow the derivatives regulations under Dodd-Frank to limit their derivative trading. It has been sickening to see how ineffective the CFTC has been in the wake of the the 2008 debacle. They Wall Street banks run this country for their own financial gains without regard to the consequences for others. They control both political parties. It started under Reagan, and continued under Bush and Clinton and Obama. Nothing has changed. At least Ron Paul can appoint a new Federal Reserve chairman to replace Bernanke and stop giving these banks TRILLIONS of virtually interest-free money. Of course, that is also the reason why Ron can't get elected!
--David