That quote is found in Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic. In reality there's a lot of great quotes and quotable findings so far, but I really liked that one. I figured since kleinbl00 has talked about Ariely multiple times, I should get around to reading him. I'm more interested in part that relates to dating, but that seems to come later.“At the level of pay that those of you who run banks get, why the hell do you need bonuses to do the right thing?” He was answered by an abyss of silence. So he went on: “Do we really have to bribe you to do your jobs? I don’t get it. Think what you are telling the average worker—that you, who are the most important people in the system and at the top, your salary isn’t enough, you need to be given an extra incentive to do your jobs right.”
~ Congressman Barney Frank.
Piketty actually hit the crazytalk salary thing as well. He made the point that it evolved in the United States because our economy wasn't annihilated by WWII and we had no landed gentry sitting around. However, he also makes the point that there's no correlation between crazy f'in salaries and value or performance, and that crazy f'in salaries are more of a social divider than anything else. In other words, crazy f'in salaries exist to signify royalty, pure and simple. They need the extra incentive so that the world knows that we're serfs and they're nobles.
Funny how that works. Ariely doesn't seem to get into that social aspect, but when you look at the bonus experiment and how the large bonus resulted in poor performance from "average", off the street people who are unaccustomed to such a thing, I can see how that can act as a division. Can I just say that I picked this up today and am already through the first chapter and could keep going if I felt like it? This book has really piqued my interest....there's no correlation between crazy f'in salaries and value or performance, and that crazy f'in salaries are more of a social divider than anything else.