why all the misguided hate?

You hit it right on the head, that has been the genius of the republican party, as they have spent the last thirty years redistributing the wealth toward the top 1% of the country at the expense of the middle class, they have been successful in convincing that same middle class that the problem is not the rich people basically stealing their money, no the economic problems are the fault of the POOR PEOPLE!!! It is truly amazing.

I have lived in Detroit all my life, and yes you have hit on some really important issues. Detroit is probably the most dependent on the auto industry, and our local news usually has at least one story a day. I think most Americans are angry about CEO salaries, and may be weren't aware of this before the current crisis. Here in Detroit we always knew it and that is one reason the unions are so strong here. The problem with union wages of the big three, folks outside of that union have not gotten pay increases and benefit packages to equal. Union pay scales and benefits have driven auto prices so high, that the auto company's best customer is their own employees. All those great UAW contract just left the rest of us paying more for a car and a loaf of bread. I don't know of anyone who thinks a retiree should not receive their pension, it was a promise. But the current benefit package should be adjusted that the current workers contribute to their health insurance and stop whining about co-pays and deductible. If I can pay it, so can they.

The mess at the auto companies has been coming for years, the current financial crisis has finally brought it all out in the light. Lets hope they find a solution to these problems soon for Detroiters and the rest of the country.

Its always blame the little guy, not the bankers who gave each other bonuses for encouraging those 'creative mortgages'.

Not the Wall St. upper echelon who get the multimillion dollar bonus, or the CEO with the golden parachute, or the good old boys network that re-employs even the losers in those corner offices, like the guy from Home Depot, who screwed them up, and left with 42 million and a new job in the auto industry. Think any of the union guys got that when the line went down?

Auto companies have been shipping jobs overseas for years, and its not union wages, because European companies have been building plants here. Its management style, one that doesn't drain a company to provide perks for the Big Wigs.

I will give you a star for insight.

What can we do?

Of all the successful people in this country only 3% of them earned it.

The other 97% got it from family.

I don't want the 3% who deserve their wealth to be punished for the horrible things the rich kids do.

We could start be getting rid of CEOs. I am sick of hearing about them.

GM sucks. They make some real crap. They bring cars from Korea and call them American cars. They are re-badged Daewoos for crying out loud.

18 million dollars went in Rick Wagoner's pocket in the last 90 days for destroying a company. Stock is as low as 1940s prices.

How come we don't put a ceiling on earnings?

How much is enough?

I make $230 dollars a month. That is not enough.

I can live on it. No toothpaste, deodorant, toilet paper, razors, etc.

I can buy ramen noodles for me and my teenage son.

How can we put up with someone making $6 million dollars a month compared to my $230?

This system of Capitalism sucks real bad.

I am a prisoner of my house because I have no vehicle.

GM could give me a van. But Rick needs that $6 million dollars more than I need a van.

Capitalism only hurts the poor.

Socialism only hurts the rich.

When will there be more poor than rich?

If the costs - labor, pension, raw materials, etc for a company increase, and goverment taxes and restrictions increase - they will go out of business. Simple as that. Some companies started ditching unprofitable lines months / years ago - some didn't (car companies) - and some couldn't (banks) due to Community Reinvestment act. If the ceo pay is too high, the owners (stockholders) can try to change that.

Unions aren’t why the Big 3 are in trouble. The Big 3 are in trouble because they’ve been offering **** products no one wants for years. They’ve relied on the truck/SUV market forever and the spike in gas prices killed their sales.

Don’t blame the Unions. Blame the execs for not offering a product the American consumer wanted.

I'll try to be honest and fair about this one.

Think about our psychology. We have this innate desire to categorize people into two basic groups; us, and them (although it might be more accurate to say "not us". And we have an innate trust for those that we consider part of "us" and a distrust (and even hatred) of those who are "not us". For a few million years, the major group was the family unit and only sometimes the tribe. This mentality is tied directly to your more primitive emotions and has helped us to survive invasions and to protect our territory.

Unfortunately, this also gives rise to undesirable mentalities such as racism, nationalism (the idea that your nationality is superior to others), and other forms of elitism. Simply put, in the absence of any real danger, we still seek out differences so we can categorize each other as "us" or "not us", and act upon our categorizations according to our primitive programming. Never mind that it may be entirely inappropriate for the times or even the situation; we're simply following one of our more primitive impulses. Like the fight or flight response; we don't pause to think about it when someone jumps out of a shadow at us, we just run or attack. Similarly, we don't think much about why we categorize people and apply preconceived ideas about them and then act upon those preconceptions; we just do it.

Unfortunately, for a species that likes to consider itself superior to other animals, we certainly seem to act a lot like them. I imagine after a few million years of deliberate restraint and social centure, we might manage to breed it out of ourselves.

CEO pay is certainly excessive. However, if CEO pay were zero at any of the troubled companies, the companies would still be troubled. Reducing CEO pay won't solve any problems. CEO pay is a convenient scapegoat, but not relevant to our current economic crisis.

Because the CEO runs the whole company moron. In good times they reel in the dough, but in bad times, they tend to take the burden of a ridiculous amount of debt for the company. Big benefits come with Big risks.

Sorry, the current economic crisis is tied directly to the bad loans made to people that couldn't afford to repay them. Unions were mentioned with regards to the big three automakers and their financial problems. Unions are exactly the reason for their problems.