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Target CEOs’ salaries, not firefighters’

Editor: I read the letter written by Mr. Leonard Kube (The Times, July 24) regarding the reduction in salary of any public worker making more than $200,000. His assertion that no firefighter should earn more than $100,000 because Mr. Kube has lived in Langley his entire life and never witnessed a fire is strange, to say the least.

I’ve never seen a bank robbery or a murder, does that follow that we don’t need policemen?

I’m also skeptical about any letter writer who asserts, as Mr. Kube does, “And everyone in this municipality would agree”.

I have trouble speaking for myself, let alone the entire municipality.

While his aim of reducing salaries is laudable, I think he’s aiming his barbs at the wrong people.

I think he would have more sympathy if his targets were CEO salaries.

These are just some of those CEO salaries: Starbucks: $10,285/hour; Dunkin Donuts: $4,889/hour and the poor old CEO of Walmart has to struggle by with only $2,704/hour. It’s not just the active executives, the recently retired chairman of a local cable company has to get by on a pension of $16,000 a day.

Just think, every 7.5 days he “earns” the salary of one of those overpaid firefighters.

The money for these overpaid public workers comes from, as Mr. Kube states, “the working man’s (could have included woman’s) pocket,” but so does the salary of a CEO.

Their salaries don’t just spring from the ground or are picked off of trees. There is only one common pool.

Fred Girling

Langley