There has been a lot of discussion about how "excessive" witness pay is responsible for the declining Steem price. Whilst it is a legitimate matter for the community to discuss there has been a lot of misinformation/misunderstandings circulating about this. I can't say what is and isn't excessive but I can comment on the figures which a lot of people seem to be misinformed about.

Quoting to provide context.

Of the roughly 800 STEEM created per minute 40 go towards miners/witnesses and 40 go towards the posting and curation rewards. This represents 5% for each respective group.

You don't understand how the monetary system works in Steem. STEEMs are created by dilution like in the case of a stock split. The 800 STEEMs created dilute every other STEEMs created before that. Out of this amount, 90% is paid back to Steem Power holders. This "dilute and paypack" is a zero-sum operation, which means that from the perspective of a Steem Power holder (a stakeholder in other words), the effective dilution is only of 80 STEEMs per minute, out of which 40 (50% of the effective dilution) are paid to witnesses and 40 (50%) are paid to content producers and curators. To be exact (and to avoid being trolled by @smooth), it seems that coefficient has been changed and that witnesses are now being paid "only" 34% of the reward pool / budget. Either way, whether it was 50% or 34% of the reward pool (effective dilution / budget) or anything in between, the figures that you heard being floated are in the right ball park and are not misinformed at all, and given these figures it's not unreasonable to consider witness pay excessive although it's a matter of personal opinion (again just a hedge to avoid getting trolled: personally I think it's outrageous).

Before starting this sort of discussion it helps with your credibility if you actually get the figures right and it is pretty easy to to read it in the white-paper as I have already stated.

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