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US Bosses Now Earn 312 Times the Average Worker's Wage, Figures Show (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The chief executives of America's top 350 companies earned 312 times more than their workers on average last year, according to a new report published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute. The rise came after the bosses of America's largest companies got an average pay rise of 17.6% in 2017, taking home an average of $18.9m in compensation while their employees' wages stalled, rising just 0.3% over the year. The pay gap has risen dramatically, with some fluctuations, since the 1990s. In 1965 the ratio of CEO to worker pay was 20 to one; that figure had risen to 58 to one by in 1989 and peaked in 2000 when CEOs earned 344 times the wage of their average worker. CEO pay dipped in the early 2000s and during the last recession, but has been rising rapidly since 2009. Chief executives are even leaving the 0.1% in the dust. The bosses of large firms now earn 5.5 times as much as the average earner in the top 0.1%.
"Last year, McDonald’s boss Steve Easterbrook earned $21.7m while the McDonald’s workers earned a median wage of just $7,017 – a CEO to worker pay ratio of 3,101 to one."
$7,017 is less than half the federal minimum wage. Clearly this "study" includes part time workers.
Actually, the prices don't need to really go up that much to compensate for increased wages because the lowest paid workers don't actually control a significant percentage of the economy in the first place. With increased minimum wage, people are able to spend more money, creating a healthier economy that actually *helps* business.
Obviously, there's a limit to how far this can be taken, but as I said, in practice it works for minimum wage and low wage earners because such a small percentage of the overall economy is actually controlled by those earners, even though they represent a majority of the population (I think it's called the Pareto Principle). As long as low wage earners control such a tiny percentage of the economy, this characteristic will endure.
The increase in prices that objectors often allege needs to occur to compensate for increased wages is not anywhere close to the amount by which the low wages are actually increased... it's more than an order of magnitude in difference.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
This should be modded up but I think a lot of people will miss the reference and joke here.
It was a world famous speech from a US beauty pageant contestant and made headlines around the world showcasing how stupid Americans can be.
The Nazis didn't start Germany's social welfare system—Bismark did that back in the 1880s, before most of those guys were even born.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Who determines the CEO's salary? Not the mum and dad share holder. Not even the institutional ones unless the salary is completely outrageous. It is a board. And who is on that board? A bunch of mates that nobody really knows.
That is what creates the high salaries. Nobody is really accountable for them. And the CEO is probably on the board of other large companies.
So, the CEO needs to be basically competent, at least at managing the board. But nobody knows who is or is not good at managing the company. Whether it is doing well because or despite the CEO.
The exception is probably CEOs that actually built the company. Bill Gates comes to mind. Love or hate him, he was clearly competent.
The terms "left" and "right" refer to the political persuasions that popped up in revolutionary France: "right wing" meant "in support of the Old Order, namely the Monarchy and the Church", whereas the left grew from marxist philosophy, and called for the overthrowing of the Old Order and the creation of a New Man as part of the lifting of the proletariat out of oppression.
Nazism and Fascism were squarely grounded in the leftist movement.
In America, the "left" is basically the same idea, and the "right" supports conserving the Old Order, which was the founding principles of individual liberty, not collectivism. Indeed, Mussolini loved FDR and his New Deal, and the Nazis liked the Democrats' collective protection of the White Race and various eugenics programs. JFK was enamored with both Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Fuck the Left. You're lying weasels.
They're only looking at the CEOs of the largest companies. Actual Average CEO salary is $162K, not $18.9M, and that doesn't count failed CEOs.
Their comparison is like saying "Average basketball player salaries are $10M/year" by just looking at the salaries of the top players in the NBA. Like sports stars, Hollywood celebrities, famous artists, etc.... there are some occupations which are lottery-like in structure, where only a few of the people who attempt them get paid the big bucks at the top of the professions. If you average in the risks of ending up being just a guy who ran a bankrupt company, or a basketball player who plays for free in the local league, or a "waiter" instead of actor, the occupations don't seem nearly as lucrative.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Unfortunately I don't have modpoints.
This is basically the model that's quite common in Europe. Don't pay any tax for the first 1000 bucks you earn. Pay about 5 or 10 % for the next 1000 bucks. This goes on for quite some time and for anything above 6000 or so you pay about 50%.
That's basically the tax model of a large portion of Europe. Yes, it means that I pay more in tax than about 50 minimum wage earners combined, even though I don't earn 50 times minimum wage, but at least all of us can actually live off that income.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Tsk. Tsk.
The 25-point platform of the NSDAP was back when the scary folks in there still had to share power with the socialists. Then this thing called The Night of the Long Knives happened.
You see, this dude named Röhm was in control of this thing called the Sturmabteilung. They were the socialists with guns.
Röhm was unhappy that by 1933 the Nazi party had complete power, but hadn't implemented any of the socialist points in the 25-point program.
Hitler never had any intentions of doing so, because the doctrine of fascism, which Hitler subscribed to, didn't really hinge upon socialist ideals.
So he killed Röhm, and every other socialist in power in the NSDAP and seized power for himself, and removing any socialist elements from the party he had usurped.
Now, I'm not saying the SA and Nazis of the '20s were great chaps themselves, but when you misleadingly lump the Nazis who started WW2 with the socialists of the 1920s, which is exactly what you're trying to do, you're being a misleading pile of shit. Or stupid. Never can tell which whenever I hear people throwing around the "Nazis were socialists" tripe.
OK, but why didn't you take the job then? You could have made dramatically more money.
I've actually been CEO of a (small) company for a few years. I don't want to do it again. I am much more happy in information security, which is more interesting, more challenging and more rewarding on a personal level to me.
Would I refuse if someone offered me a two-digit million salary for the job? Of course not. But half of that salary would be paying me for doing something I'd rather prefer not to do, and a good part of it would go to coaches and other support to enable me to do it at all.
People think that those millions are for sitting on your ass and playing boss. I've seen how some of these guys actually work and for my current salary, or even twice that, I wouldn't work like that. That's why I say a 20x factor is justified, because at that level, your job becomes your life.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The Nazis didn't start Germany's social welfare system—Bismark did that back in the 1880s, before most of those guys were even born.
This.
The Nazis cut back the social programs put in by previous governments going back to the formation of the German state. Socialism was the first declared enemy of the Nazi party, long before they started on Jews they beat up and killed known Bolsheviks.
The closest thing the Nazis came to implementing a social program was Action T4, the forced euthanasia of anyone considered a burden to the state. People like the elderly, the infirm, the feeble (mentally handicapped), the deformed, so on and so forth.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
In 1910, there was no federal income tax.
You may have meant the Revenue Act of 1913, in which the top rate was 6%.
But I suppose the actual numbers wouldn't have sounded quite as compelling.