You’d probably keep enough to support your family with a comfortable lifestyle for the rest of your lives. Maybe you’d donate some to a favorite charity, disaster relief fund or your church. Perhaps, just because you could, you’d give gobs of it to random needy people. And maybe you’d finally give in to Suzanne Somers’ pleas to give just one dollar a day to feed needy African children.

The fact is that most of us have never wondered what we’d do with $100 million because we know we’ll never have it. However, a handful of people do know what it’s like to wallow in this kind of wealth – year after year.

Terry S. Semel, CEO of Yahoo, Inc., led the pack last year with a whopping $109,301,385 in total compensation. On the lower end of 2004’s highest-paid CEOs, if you can consider this low, was Wayne R. Inouye of Gateway, Inc. bringing in $46,338,744. Does one really need that much money?

Just for fun, let’s look at what Semel’s one-year salary can buy.

• A four-year BYU-Idaho education for 9,091 students (79 percent of our current student body)

• Four years’ worth of college textbooks for 45,788 students (more than the combined enrollment of BYU and BYU-I)

• Enough food to feed you for 83,333 years and a family of four for 20,833 years (avg. $100 per person per month)

• Gas for 119,048 years (avg. $70 a month)

• A two-week supply of food for the 13 million hungry children in the United States

• 6.6 million CDs

• 3.3 million dinner-and-movie dates

• 3,571 new cars (avg. 28,000)

• 350 new homes (avg. $285,700) – That’s almost two homes in every country, or seven in every state!

• 66,667 engagement rings (avg. $1500) – Good time to be a polygamist?

If you combine the top 10 CEO salaries for 2004, it’s enough to buy every BYU-I student two brand-new cars – a total of $605,393,617.

Is there a problem with CEOs hogging such a large portion of a company’s wealth? After all, they put in their dues and head successful, profitable companies. Do they deserve the pay, or are they robbing working families of deserved pay increases, retirement benefits, bonuses and other perks.

According to the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, CEOs of major companies earned average total compensation of $9.84 million in 2004, a 12-percent hike from 2003. However non-supervisor worker pay went up a measly 2.2 percent to $27,485.

The inconsistency of CEO-to-worker pay raises is alarming. When common workers see CEOs unjustifiably taking disproportionate shares of company profits, morale plummets, trust falters and workers seek alternate employment opportunities.

Many companies must reconsider their compensation systems in order to foster better employee relations and retain valuable workers and shareholders.

If Semel cut only half of his salary and distributed it evenly among Yahoo’s 5,000 employees, each associate would receive an $11,000 bonus each year. Ethical employee relations would triumph, Semel would still be filthy rich and Yahoo employees would be overjoyed.

Greed crumbles companies. Gluttony gouges the working class.

Chief executives must be checked regarding their compensation, and profits should be shared more proportionately among those who deserve it.