The beverages are on Tim Cook.

$377,996,538. That is how so much the brand new Apple (AAPL) CEO made closing 12 months. That is not how a lot he is made in his lifetime. It isn't what quantity of money his corporate made, despite the fact that that may be a very good benefit for a corporation. That is how so much he made in 2011, in step with this newspaper's annual What the Boss Makes survey. Greater than one million bucks an afternoon. Roughly, $43,151 an hour. Approximately $57,534 for each hour he was wide awake (figuring he will get six hours an evening.) If he took his pay in $1 bills, it could weigh 417 heaps. He may just purchase 757,515 iPads (now not counting the worker bargain.) He'd must spend it at a fee of $719 a minute to burn thru his pay in a year.

To positioned Cook's pay package, the top within the valley, in point of view: It is truly, really a lot.

A caveat: All however a few couple million of Cook's 2011 pay was in Apple inventory that vests over 10 years. So, if he leaves the company, dependent on while he leaves the company, he may not see all of it. However do not feel too badly. If he remains and the inventory assists in keeping emerging (it is already inside placing distance of doubling because it was granted) he will make much more than $378 million for the year.

The putting in place point of view turns out to get tougher every year. Cook dinner is in no way the primary valley CEO to wish a supertanker

to get his paycheck house. Nine-figure pay applications are commonplace sufficient that they slightly make a dash in Silicon Valley. After all, this position is all approximately cash. It is how we stay rating. And for the ones protecting rating at home, remaining year's No. 1, Oracle's (ORCL) Larry Ellison, is now No. 2. He is caught within the $70-million-plus range, very similar to remaining year.

Maybe we must always make Ellison an honorary member of the NINETY NINE percent, for the reason that his wages have stagnated.

OK, I admit it. I experience having somewhat amusing on the fee of the wealthy. They may be able to find the money for it in spite of everything. However there's a critical aspect to all of this. In many ways the valley's gargantuan pay programs are an emblem of the rising divide among the wealthy and the remaining who are living on this u . s ..

I've written approximately this factor sooner than and once I have, my e-mail has incorporated notes that say I NEED TO hate the wealthy. (I DO NOT). Or that I HAVE TO imagine that once it involves pay, there's a aspect the place sufficient is sufficient. (I'D). However the actual explanation why I FEEL that is value speaking approximately is that the rising disparity among the wealthy and people who are heart elegance or bad is a lead to for concern.

Consider that among 1988 and 2008, in line with the interior Income Service, the inflation-adjusted source of revenue of a regular taxpayer dropped by $400, to $33,000. In the course of the similar time, the richest 1 percent, folks who make $380,000 or more, noticed their earning build up by 33 percent.

Then imagine that once the bulk sees or senses that the sport is rigged towards them -- that chance is way extra to be had to a few, in comparison to the remainder -- it erodes agree with. Folks now not really feel vested in our democracy and our commonplace pursuits. Individuals who have labored hard, handiest to fall behind, turn into stressed.

"If you are a CEO of 1 of the large 500 companies, you are most likely making as so much in or three hours as a regular salary employee is making every so often in or three years," says Sister Nora Nash, a Philadelphia-area Catholic nun, who works with the Interfaith Heart on Company Duty. "HOW WILL YOU morally take a look at your lifestyles and notice how that may be just?"

I known as Sister Nash, who is taken on Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein amongst others, as a result of frankly I USED TO BE suffering. One thing appeared inherently mistaken with the perception that one person, whose company's luck depends upon the paintings of millions of others across the world, have to be paid just about $400 million in a yr. And, of course, the query is going way past Tim Cook dinner. The What the Boss Makes survey is stuffed with executives who had been paid excess of mere mortals could realize what to do with.

But what? What precisely is inaccurate with paying an government greater than the GNP of a small country?

Sister Nash defined that the best way she sees it, it is all approximately protecting our groups from coming aside on the seams. "WE GLANCE on the downside of the rising inequity right here on this u . s . a . and within the world," she says. "And we are saying we actually have to be running for the average excellent; and the typical excellent of the human group is to result in a few form of sustainability."

Instead, she says, increasingly of the rustic is slipping into poverty. It is a bleak picture, however Sister Nash is holding the religion (occupational danger.) Extremely paid CEOs have super energy and super manner to do excellent. She issues to the philanthropy of Invoice Gates, who was for years vilified as a stingy billionaire, and his wife, Melinda.

"They've in point of fact taken the time to look what they are able to do to modify the lives of people," she says.

And so, we will be able to all wish that during time, Tim Cook dinner and his fellow valley moguls can be popping for a lot greater than a celebratory spherical of drinks.

Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5536. Observe him at Twitter.com/mikecassidy.