I'd disagree strongly that "those who live at the "poverty line" in the USA would live a life of "abundance" in all poor nations". That just doesn't hold up. They may not be the bottom of the pile but they'd still not be considered living in abundance compared to those that actually do.
CEOs earning 380 times the average salary of their employees is an unfair share I would say. Whether its the nation or 'the collective'. I suspect the concept of fairness doesn't come into things in your ideology, but I could be wrong.
Its not unfair if the shareholders are fine with it, which is usually the case. CEOs are tasked with making sure the whole company is profitable, at the end of the day (unlike governments apparently) the buck really does stop at the CEOs desk. That is why they resign or are forced to leave if what they end up producing is a debacle (how many people have been fired for the mess of a website that's going to end up costing over a billion dollars? How many were fired for the invasion of Iraq over what's considered to be fabricated reasons?). And even if the CEO just sat in his or her chair all day and picked their nose, and even if he or she was getting paid 1000 times more than the average salary of the rest of the employees, its got nothing to do with fair or unfair since if he or she was paid less doesn't automatically mean others would be paid more. It just means the shareholders will get to keep more as profit (which is the
sole reason the company is functioning in the first place). So in other words, he or she is not taking anyone else's share..
And I think you missed steveinbsas's point: The wealth is neither the collective's nor the nation's. It belongs to the people who worked their @$$es off to create or accumulate it. In this case, the shareholders. And so they can dispense with it as they please.
Talking about fair and unfair though:
Starting pay for a CPA in one of the big fours (which shall go unnamed): $4500 en mano (starting out), $6500 en mano (after a couple of promotions)
Street cleaners: $7000 en mano (2012; starting out)
Truck drivers: $10,000 en mano (starting out)
Now I would say that that is unfair because the latter two jobs require zero to very little previous experience or previous "hard work" as opposed to becoming a CPA. That is something I would call a lopsided economy where the incentive is in
not working hard. And the only reason for this kind of economy is that the latter two have strong unions who can twist the government's ear (who are forever in the middle of business, screwing things up) but the former don't.
This is what happens in an economy not based on merit but based on envy of "well why does the other guy have so much" without thinking "maybe the other guy worked his butt off to get where he is".
But even with all that, here's something else that's
truly unfair. A baby born completely healthy while another born, at the same time, with cancer, or an organ that's not functioning, or blind or deaf...
What do you do? Whine about the healthy baby being healthy ("why does the CEO have so much money?!!!)? Take out or damage the organs of the healthy baby so it is equal to the one born unhealthy? Or work hard, day and night, to make sure the unhealthy baby has a fighting chance?
This whole "its not fair!" cry has gone a little too far these days. Is it unfair that a kid who parties all night fails his exams because of that while the kid who studies hard passes? Should the kid who passes his exams have to fail or have lower grades just because the other kid couldn't set his priorities straight? Yup, I know of schools that already reward the behavior of imbeciles; they don't care much about studying but still end up passing their exams.
I wouldn't be surprised that when they grow up, and are not rewarded for bad behavior, they too are going to be whining about it all being "unfair".