Thursday, December 23, 2010

Maybe if Ben Affleck actually had to earn his keep...

Ben Affleck, playing his favorite role-champion of the ‘little guy’, appeared on NPR to push his new movie, Company Men:

INSKEEP: There's a line in Company Men that's staying with me. Tommy Lee Jones is at a corporate conference table. Someone else at the conference table is discussing their plans to lay off a bunch of workers. And nearly all the workers being laid off are older, which could be construed as being wrong or illegal. Someone at the table says: "Oh, no. This is going to pass legal scrutiny." And Jones responds: "I always thought we aimed for a little higher standard than that."

AFFLECK: That speaks so perfectly to people's feelings about our country. It's like it's just about getting by, or people can like let people go if they can get away with it, that there's no deeper sense of right or wrong. The banks shouldn't -- people shouldn't make such a giant profit off just moving money back and forth. And CEOs' pay shouldn't be 200 times the average worker. It used to be nine times.
Wow, two hundred times the average worker? That’s a lot isn’t it?

From the comments at the above link:

# 5 "Gigli" Starring Ben

Submitted by Chris Norman on Wed, 12/22/2010 - 8:37am.

"Gigli" Starring Ben Affleck

Net losses, inflation adjusted: $77,961,644

Total cost: $74,000,000

Worldwide theater gross: $7,266,209

Net losses (actual): $66,733,791

Affleck’s salary for the film was $12.5 million

The "Mainstream" Media: By liberals. For liberals.
Hmmm-the average actor (IMHO Affleck would need to improve quite a bit to be average) earns $50,000 a year. Affleck made $12.5 million for acting in a total flop. He made two hundred and fifty times the pay of the average worker for a movie that lost $66,733,791. I can see why he considers himself an expert on who is overpaid.

I don’t begrudge Affleck his pay but nor do I begrudge the typical CEO his pay. I would, however, argue that the CEO does a hell of a lot more to earn his money than Mr. Affleck. Therefore I am anxious to know how Affleck justifies his pay while claiming that others are un-entitled to benefits he routinely enjoys.