Fair correction and poorly worded on my part, partly because the idea of assigning value to a persons production can be kind of nebulus. I certainly wasn't literately asking if anyone is worth a billion dollars, conjuring up mental imagery of people put on a stage to be bought and sold.
If a person goes to look for a job and they have a dollar amount in their heads they'ed like to earn. If they feel they are worth $50k a year, do you really think that that person means to sell themselves? No...And when I talk about worth and value I mean it in the same way a person might think of their worth in the job market....
I understand your point and position. However, it's irrelevant what a person thinks about their self. It matters what others value them at, or more accurately, what others value their potential in services that they can provide or their product production capabilities.
A person can think they should earn $50k, but if the market won't bear it, or if the market doesn't agree with their value evaluation, then they will not get $50k. And then there's that word I used... "earn."
Many people forget that pay is in fact earned. It isn't a right or a guarantee. If a person can earn the amount they want, they can get it - or more. If they cannot earn it with their skills, knowledge and talents, then they better be prepared to devalue their self evaluation, because the market dang sure will for them.
Remember, the market is the target for selling your services or products you produce. That's the other word people don't typically associate with pay... "selling." Because that's what a person is actually doing - selling their skills, knowledge and talents to the market. And it doesn't matter if they're self employed or an employee of a company. They are selling to the consumer, the market - whether it be a client, patron or employer.
So, to use an analogy, if a consumer (an employer in your discussion) wants to buy a TV, they determine two things, what level of quality and capability they want in a TV, and what price level they are prepared to pay. The TV manufactures and retailers (the employee in your discussion) must provide both - a TV that's quality and capabilities as well as the price level are what the market requires and is prepared to purchase. In some instances, there are segments of the consumer market that are willing to sacrifice a certain level of quality and capabilities because they don't need all the bells and whistles and are only willing to pay a lower price - therefore there are manufacturers and retailers that specialize in lower priced TV's that have limited quality and limited capabilities. On the other end of the spectrum are the high end consumers that have exacting standards and have the money to pay to reach those standards. They want a TV that can communicate with the world through the internet, automatically tune to favorite stations and record favorite shows and are capable of playing video games in Dolby Surround Sound on their 100 inch curved screen. There are manufactures for those TV's but very few (just like there are jobs that pay millions of dollars, but very few, and very few people with the capability of earning it).
This is actually very simple. If a person wants to make $50k, they need to do what it takes to provide a a level of service or production capability to make there product worth $50k to the public or to their employer. If they're not willing or capable of doing that, then they need to be prepared to get paid "what they're worth" (to use the term being used in this thread) to the market.
This is also the problem with setting minimum or maximum wages. They are arbitrary numbers based on what group think believes is either a "living wage" or is more than enough for a person to live on.
Living wage? Based on what? An arbitrary number that doesn't take into consideration the variations from geographic location to geographic location due to cost of living variances as well as market availability, capability and saturation?
And who is to determine the maximum a person can earn? In the federal bailout, the government set limits on what senior management could be paid for their services that worked for companies that received federal money. That's totally antithetical to a capitalist market. So unless were prepared to go down the road to communism, we need to prevent that from ever happening again.
If a person has earned a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00) then obviously the market feels that whatever they provided as a service or product was worth it.
So, even though we've both agreed that the thread title is not an accurate representation or description of the facts, I will answer the question -
Yes, if the market agrees... and if the market has paid them that much, then it obviously does agree.
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