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After donating $8 billion, Steve and Connie Ballmer create three regional philanthropies so people closest to the work can decide how the money is spent

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1

After donating $8 billion, Steve and Connie Ballmer create three regional philanthropies so people closest to the work can decide how the money is spent

2

U.S. Treasury is paying $3 billion a day in interest on national debt, says the CBO—having spent $10 billion to prop up the currency of its top lender

3

Google cofounder Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses
Apple

Apple, Tim Cook and the wealth distribution curve

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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January 24, 2015, 8:22 AM ET
Image: 9to5Mac
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A friend sent me the attached video (below) a few weeks ago. I’d seen it before. Maybe you have too. It’s been viewed 16 million times since it was posted in 2012, and voted up nearly 100,000.

I was reminded of it this week reading through the juicy nuggets reporters were pulling out of Apple’s latest Definitive Proxy Statement. Angela Ahrendts’ $73.4 million. Tim Cook’s $9.22 million.

I could poke fun at the editors at Bloomberg, so impressed by Cook’s comp (“more than double his pay in 2013”). Does no one there remember writing this silly headline?

Apple CEO Cook’s 2011 Comp Worth $378M

But I’m not laughing, and this bit of agitprop — worthy of Apple-compensation-committee-member Al Gore — is one of the reasons:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/QPKKQnijnsM]

If you don’t think vast and growing wealth disparities are dangerous, just look around the world.

Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.

About the Author
By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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