An unreasonable sense of entitlement

Paula Bennett also speaks disapprovingly of those people
she thinks have an ‘unreasonable sense of entitlement.’
I wonder if, say, Mark Weldon, chief executive of the New
Zealand Stock Exchange, whose pay-packet last year went
up from $895,566 to $1,390,000, could also be
considered to have an unreasonable sense of entitlement.
Of course he has a high-powered job but a pay rise of
nearly half a million dollars? On top of a salary already
stratospheric by most people’s standards? Depends on
your definition of ‘reasonable,’ I guess. But it’s funny how
the large amounts of money ‘earned’ or accrued in the
form of profits by those at the top of the private-sector
heap attract no government opprobrium, indeed, are
happily supported, directly or indirectly, by the whole
ethos of government as we know it. Yet these ‘earnings’
are made on the back of lesser-paid people’s labour and
investment, and sometimes at the cost of the latter’s jobs
and livelihoods. Perhaps it would help to correct the
balance if cabinet ministers occasionally made it clear—
ever so politely, of course—that the barons of the
boardroom are the ones with the really unreasonable
sense of entitlement.