Move over, James Brown, because anyone paying attention knows that Steve Jobs has long been the hardest working man in show business. Or would be, if he were actually in show business. Which he sort of is, what with one of his CEOships being for Pixar and all, plus the act of running Apple primarily consisting of a starring role in a neverending soap opera that, surprise surprise, translates uncannily well to the small screen. (Look, ready-made plots! Writers? We don't need no stinkin' writers. Nor do we have any, which ought to be painfully evident to anyone tuning in; just count the number of complete sentences in this scene so far, assuming you can find any to begin with.)

Okay, so Steve-o works hard for the money, so hard for it honey-- just how much money are we talking about, here? Well, we're far too lazy to go digging up his salary at Pixar, but faithful viewer Frozen Tundra kindly forwarded us a Reuters article which reports that, once again, Steve was paid a whopping one dollar for his work at Apple last year. This marks the fifth consecutive year in which Steve's annual salary as CEO of Apple equates to the pay for, what-- about ten minutes spent flipping burgers at Wendy's? Oh, sure, there have been a few minor perks along the way, such as a jet and stock options that would have been worth some serious ducats had Apple's stock not tanked shortly after he received them, but the fact remains that, paycheck-wise, Steve is being paid only a dollar more to run Apple for a whole year than you're paid to breathe for five minutes. And you can breathe while you sleep. Probably.

Indeed, reportedly none of the bigwigs at Apple is cleaning up in the paycheck department; despite finally lifting "a salary freeze that had maintained employee and executive officers at 2001 levels" just this past November, Apple didn't give end-of-year raises to any of its executives for the third year running, nor did it hand out any more stock options. At least non-executive employees got merit increases, so not everyone's hurting, but yeesh. Here's hoping that execs were already making enough moolah not to seek greener pastures-- well, execs other than Steve, we mean, since even a 15% merit raise would only score him a free iTunes Music Store song if he saves up for seven more years. (Good luck keeping him around if Disney ever makes an offer. Then again, Steve collects CEOships like he collects recording artist lawsuits; pile 'em on, he's got all the time in the world.)

That said, it's not like Steve is starving or anything; he is a billionaire, you know, and while he didn't receive any sort of bonus from Apple last year, the company was kind enough to give him "$74.75 million in restricted stock in exchange for his outstanding stock options," which you probably figure should keep him comfortably in Pez and video rentals for another year. There's just one problem, though: the so-called "restricted stock" doesn't vest for another couple of years, but we expect he can stretch his savings to hold him above water until then. He might have to economize a bit in the meantime-- for example, hiring generic hit men to smite his enemies instead of enlisting the expensive brand-name ones. Will the belt-tightening never end?