What's so hard to believe about someone getting used to a certain paycheck? My income has varied greatly over the years, and each time I was making significant money, I "couldn't imagine" going back to less than significant money. It's human nature.

Why do people assume that something is wrong with a situation like this? Some people make more money than you do. Be happy for them and aspire to do the same (maybe, you know... find out how they did it), or just ignore them.

It sounds like they get a helluva lot more than 7 weeks paid vacation every year. That's the whole point of the article.

I've worked mostly at smaller companies and one very large one (50,000+ employees). I'll grant you that the oversight wasn't the greatest at the large company, but every department still had to produce something. I'm not saying all government workers are bad/lazy/whatever, just that there is less incentive to be productive, so "goofing off" is certainly more common in the public sector.

As phorm pointed out, when a worker in the private sector goofs off, that can have detrimental effects on a company's bottom line, and the company can take appropriate action. If a public sector worker goofs off, time is lost, but there is no bottom line for a government agency to be affected. Sure, they all have budgets, but there are not many negative consequences for having bad employees. They'll usually get a few more bucks in next year's budget regardless of performance. And the travesty here is that we're paying them to do a bad job. Public sector employees should take their jobs even more seriously than private sector employees because every tax-payer is ultimately affected by their performance.

I have no personal experience working for any government agency, but I did have a friend who got a job with the federal government after having worked in the private sector for many years. After about a month, his direct superior told him to take it easier because he was too efficient. If he stayed at the current level, many other workers would look bad in comparison, and the manager didn't want to have to explain that to his bosses. The manager absolutely could not get away with something like that at a competent profitable private company.

I can totally imagine Sheldon and Leonard having this exact conversation.

Exactly. The price for a 30-second spot for a show on a major network with X ratings and Y demographics will be Z. It won't be Z-1 or Z+1. And it won't be influenced by how much the actors get paid. It won't even be influenced by how much the show costs to produce. If I made a show in my living room using my phone as a camera and just me as an actor that somehow got BBT ratings on CBS, they would charge the exact same amount as they do for BBT. It's just like any other product - cost of production has no relevance to its retail price.

If you think PMT was less-well-paid because he wasn't white, then you don't understand anything about TV. If people tuned in to watch PMT more than Don Johnson, he would have been paid more than Don Johnson. The truth is, Don Johnson and hot girls in bikinis were about the only reasons to tune into that show. Just about any decent actor (white or not) could have played Tubbs, and we wouldn't have cared.

The price of advertising is already at its maximum. If the network could charge one dollar more for a 30-second spot, they would. The advertisers won't pay more just because the stars now get paid more.

I don't think you understand the concept of value. No one is arguing that what they do is "life risking", but that's not the point (and what "life risking" profession gets paid millions?). What they do is get millions of people to watch a TV show 24 times a year, and that is extremely valuable. If the network/production company (I'm not sure how the finances/responsibility is split between the two) would lose money by giving these actors that much money, then they wouldn't do the deal, so this obviously (well, maybe not to you) makes great sense for all parties involved.

And as to your "it's not overly hard" claim: Have you tried acting/making people laugh week after week for years? It is incredibly difficult, and a big reason why actors millions enjoy watching get paid so much.

That's untrue. They only reason that there was a tenth season is that they got the $1M per ep they asked for (a ridiculous sum at the time, of course, and one I don't think they expected to get). Schwimmer and Kudrow said they wanted season nine to be the last season, but that amount of money is hard for anyone to turn down.

How are they overpaid? The production company and the network make millions off of this show. The actors are (obviously) an integral part of the success of the show, and therefore the revenue, so why not pay them whatever they can negotiate?

Most successful people work much more than 45 hours per week. It's just a matter of priorities.

No, EA cares a great deal about their customers - they couldn't stay in business without them. It's just that most of EA's customers don't give a rats ass about what EA does to them.

Start a company that employs tens of thousands of tax-paying employees and we'll talk.

Yes, to buy votes.