VILLAGE IDIOT: Give you $156 million for your thoughts

I'm sure you've heard the argument that if we raise the minimum wage, the cost of that raise will just get passed along to you, the paying customer. You'll have to pay more for your hamburger, more for your clean hotel room, more for your convenience at the convenience store.

I bring this up because recently, it was reported that a television executive got paid $156 million in 2014. He runs the company that owns the Discovery Channel. Let's call him David Zaslav. Let's call him David Zaslav because that's his name. And my question would be, isn't his salary passed along to the consumer? Where does that $156 million come from, if not from Discovery's advertisers, who pass along their rising costs to us?

Why is it OK for one employee to pass his salary along to the consumer, but not all of them? If the argument for paying CEOs so well is that it's an incentive, why is it so good for CEOs, but not so good for the rest of us?

And that, my friend, is why you will never be a CEO. You obviously haven't been to business school. Because then you would know that if the company didn't pay him so much, he might quit. And where on Earth are they gonna find somebody else who would work for $156 million a year, even if it's mostly in stock options? Oh, yeah — just about anywhere.

Would David have quit working at Discovery Communications, the TV conglomerate he runs, if he only got paid, say, $75 million a year? Would he have stomped out in a snit? Would he have left for some other company that would pay him $156 million? Whoops! I forgot: There is no other company that would pay him $156 million.

Do you think he'd walk away if they had only offered $35 million a year? Maybe. After all, he does preside over Shark Week, and Nik Wallenda walking over the Grand Canyon without a net. Show biz is wacky that way. But the CEO of Bank of America, which is a much, much bigger company than Discovery, made only $14.5 million last year. The CEO of Chrysler made only $38 million. Yet they bit the bullet and stayed with their companies in spite of the low, low, low pay.

Why, you might ask, is David getting paid so much? I'm sure he works hard, but don't we all? Did he invent television? Does he write the shows? Film them? Direct them? Did the guy who runs Bank of America invent banking? Did the guy who runs Chrysler invent the automobile?

Henry Ford actually did invent a car, and he became fabulously wealthy. You would hardly call him a communist. Yet when other car companies were paying their workers a dollar a day, Ford raised his workers' pay to $5 a day. Not only did it keep turnover way down, but his workers could suddenly afford to buy Ford cars.

When the chairman of Starbucks was on "60 Minutes," they asked him how his fast-food company could pay a living wage to its coffee pickers, contribute to its employees' health care costs and chip in for their college tuition. His answer was, basically, "Why do you think a cup of our coffee costs three dollars?"

This is not communism — the chairman of Starbucks is a very wealthy guy — and I'm not a communist. I think CEOs should earn as much as they possibly can; I'd enjoy being fabulously wealthy as much as the next guy. But if it makes sense for the CEO to be paid well, why doesn't it make sense for everyone in the company to be paid well -- as much as possible, rather than the current trend of as little as possible? If the CEO can get a big raise and stock options, why can't everyone?

A rising tide should lift all boats, not just the yachts.

Jim Mullen is the author of “It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life,” “Baby’s First Tattoo” and “Now in Paperback.” He can be reached at jim_mullen@myway.com.