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%.

Comments

Alternatives

[BeauHD (.) (349)]

And this is why capitalism will not be around for much longer. It totally puts the world upside down. Post below how you would change the world to have less capitalism and less of a wage gap.

-=BeauHD=-

Re:Alternatives

[phantomfive]

And this is why capitalism will not be around for much longer. It totally puts the world upside down.

And what is the alternative? The benefit of capitalism is that it harnesses how people already are: greedy. For myself, I don't care that some people have much more than me, I am more worried that I don't have more. The biggest problem in the US right now is access to healthcare, but no one has a reasonable plan.

Re:Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

The main "benefit" of capitalism is that it reinforces political conservatism (that is, the rule of the current elite) with relatively little violence, by heavily discounting the future. It is a peaceful tyranny over progress.

You're right that it was an improvement over what was in the past before it, when the hold on progress was much more violent, but had you lived at the times when Capitalism was emerging, you'd have been vehemently against it, because it was the new, radical and scary thing.

And yeah, it is obvious that given the scale of human technology today, Capitalism, at least on a planetary scale, has exhausted itself. Capitalism is prone to producing exponential solutions. The problem is, these are unfeasible in a world governed by the laws of physics. You need someone to put, so to speak, limits to growth on this solution if you don't want to die in your own poo. And that isn't something Capitalism can do.

The path is clear, and Asimov guessed it in the 50s already -- Gaia -- a global consciousness, where the individual greed doesn't mean so much. It is a Communism on a telepathic level, if you will.

And it is coming.

Re:Alternatives

[Tom]

The benefit of capitalism is that it harnesses how people already are: greedy.

The problem is that it rewards being greedy, and it rewards higher greed with higher rewards. This way, a questionable trait is amplified.

The biggest problem in the US right now is access to healthcare, but no one has a reasonable plan.

Funny how the rest of the world has that one figured out. It is not a lack of plan, it is a lack of want. Too many people profit from the current situation.

The same happened in Germany, just the other way around. We had a perfectly workable pension system, which had survived both world wars and was doing ok. There were some issues that needed adjustments, and a problem of money being squandered on non-pension issues. But it was a state-run system and thus generated no profit for anyone. So in a two-decade campaign, the public was convinced that the system was utterly broken, would fail real-soon-now and they themselves would receive tiny pensions if it is not completely reworked. Then it got completely reworked and turned into a hybrid system where you get minimal payout from the state-pension system (that anyway you pay in as much as before) while having additional private insurance-based pensions with tax incentives to make people go there. Ten years down the road it turns out that people now get exactly what they were threatened with: Tiny pensions even after a life-time of work. The whole thing makes absolutely no sense until you realize that the main thing that changed is that the insurance industry has a new market and is making really nice profits from it.

Same with your healthcare system. Follow the money. Someone would make less money if you had proper healthcare, and that someone is fighting tooth and nail, before and behind the curtains, to keep the system as it is.

Re:Alternatives

[alvinrod]

That's $21M that goes back into the economy instead of an offshore hedge fund.

Perhaps that's a good argument for reducing the tax rates in those brackets in order to make it more profitable to reinvest the money in the American economy as opposed to overseas.

That's the problem with CEO salaries: While there are formulas and charts explaining exactly how much you should pay a line worker at McDonalds (and it happens to be "just enough so that desperate people will apply"), there is no formula for figuring out how much you should pay a CEO.

There aren't nice formulas and charts for many other things as well. CEOs are worth whatever they can charge. You'd hardly disparage any other employee of a company from asking for and getting a raise, so why should a CEO be any different? Also, unless you own stock in a company, why do you care what they do with their money. Whether you believe they are overpaying a CEO does not change your life. If you do own stock, go to a shareholders meeting and present your case for why the CEO should be compensated less.

If CEO pay is going up, I suspect it is because the largest companies are themselves becoming larger as well as international players. It doesn't make much sense for the CEO/owner of a 20 person company to make 300x the salary of the average worker. It's probably not possible financially. However, get a company that employs tens or even hundreds of thousands of employees and it's not difficult to imagine, especially if most of those employees are low skill or do not command high wages. What you should really look at is CEO wage growth relative to revenue growth of companies. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all earning above $100 billion yearly. Even seemingly exorbitant CEO pay is a drop in the bucket and probably a much smaller percentage of company revenue than the CEO pay for smaller sized companies.

There's also a mistaken belief that if a CEO were not paid as much that other workers would receive more. This is unlikely to be the case as the difference would likely be paid out to shareholders as dividends or reinvested by the company. The only thing that will result in wage increases for the rank and file is greater demand for their labor. Unless another company is willing to pay more, you're unlikely to see an increase in wages for those positions.

Re:Alternatives

[Whibla]

It is a truism that new systems arise due to a failure of the old...

... but had you lived at the times when Capitalism was emerging, you'd have been vehemently against it, because it was the new, radical and scary thing.

Capitalism, as in private ownership of the means of production, arose, partly, as a result of the "Tragedy of the Commons". (c.f. The "Inclosure Acts".) Certainly this is one 'solution' to the problem, but it's a solution that comes with its own bag of problems, notably the enriching of a few at the expense of the many.

Funnily enough you mention political conservatism as a beneficiary of capitalism but, while you're not wrong, it's only since the late 1970's that the landscape of the political right morphed from being social conservatism, i.e. those elites considering and caring for the plebeian masses - albeit partially only because it was in their self interest to do so (vive la revolution still being somewhat fresh in people's minds), to free market conservatism, i.e. dog eat dog, may the 'best' man win. Of course the problem with the latter is that capital grows capital: if you're at the top it's relatively easy to stay at the top; if you're at the bottom it's extremely difficult to climb out from under all those lying on top of you.

And yeah, it is obvious that given the scale of human technology today, Capitalism, at least on a planetary scale, has exhausted itself. Capitalism is prone to producing exponential solutions. The problem is, these are unfeasible in a world governed by the laws of physics. You need someone to put, so to speak, limits to growth on this solution if you don't want to die in your own poo. And that isn't something Capitalism can do.

Perhaps not quite how I'd have phrased it, but, yeah, pretty much spot on!

Re:Alternatives

[jpaine619]

But I bet you can find someone who can run that company for $500,000.

This is the problem with you lefties, It's like you don't care that this $56M CEO has brought in $1 Billion in new business.. Or maybe he's hired 20,000 new workers at a really good wage to run the new factory in Utah... Or maybe he dumps a billion dollars a year into R&D that results in a thousand research scientists with a job they love.. No.. you simply care that he makes a gob more money than regular employees... Even if those regular employees have top paying jobs for their field.

When I worked at AT&T, the CEO was making something like $20M. I couldn't have cared less if he was being paid $100M. I had a great paying job that I loved doing. I was making about $120K a year and the work was, mostly, fun and interesting. Why should I care what Randall Stephenson (CEO) was making? There were days when I worked at double and a half rate and made $1000. Why would I be so petty as to care that another person was rich?

None of those CEOs are being paid a dime more than the shareholders allow. 50.1% of voting shareholders can fire his ass or choose not to fire him if they think he's doing a good job.

These are publicly traded companies.. They are run by a Board of Directors.. Another voting situation. They decide how much the CEO is paid. Those Directors are ELECTED by voting shares.

You don't like how much a CEO is being paid? Then vote for a Board of Directors that will fire him.

You can't vote because you don't own stock? Then why the fuck do you care how much he's making?

This idea that it doesn't matter if the bottom is being lifted up if the top is being lifted higher... it's wrong. The US is in the top 20 "highest quality of life" list. We have it great here. Most people are not in poverty.. Every year even less people are in poverty.. The bottom is being lifted up.. Quit worrying about the speed at which the top goes up and worry about the speed at which the bottom goes up... Work to improve that.. Don't waste effort on trying to slow the top... That is a waste of energy..

Re:Alternatives

[mapkinase]

> That's $21M that goes back into the economy instead of an offshore hedge fund.

That's not the only consequence. The other consequence is that nobody decent and enterprizing wants that job anymore, and company tanks. Everybody gets zero. The money dissipates entropically.

Re:Alternatives

[bluefoxlucid]

Use a universal dividend. It's a demogrant, but it's not basic income: it won't pay for the things you need and it's not guaranteed to go up or down. It tracks our productivity, essentially: if we have more income per capita, then the dividend increases by that same amount--no tax adjustments necessary.

This solves basically every economic problem. You still use other social insurances because solving those problems directly is more-efficient.

Direct social insurances go away when you resolve the microeconomy: welfare money enters the local economy, gets spent, creates job demand, and then vanishes when people become employed, reducing the supportable jobs and causing unemployment. You stasis with your city in poverty, but not in the worst possible poverty.

A dividend keeps paying, so you transition support for those first service-level jobs (selling things to the local economy, which doesn't draw outside income) onto that basis. The economy continues to strengthen, and can eventually transition to stronger service jobs and greater reach, stabilizing itself.

I designed the American Citizen's Dividend in such a way as to have the greatest impact on the poorest, and to reclaim as you move up from there. In 2016 it turned out to be an overall tax cut: I restructured $1.1 trillion of Federal spending into $2.0 trillion, with the Dividend itself paying benefits offsetting $1.2 trillion of taxes (the person receiving the benefit paid some amount in taxes, and we deduct up to the full benefit from that amount; you count up $1.2 trillion or so). That's +$0.9 trillion, -$1.2 trillion, a net $0.3 trillion reduction in tax burdens.

Meanwhile your overall general tax rate is a bit higher as you go up through middle-class. That means you're getting $6,000 of Dividend, but only coming out $4,000 or $2,000 ahead. The poorest people don't have much income to tax, so they're coming out $5,500 ahead. The rich end up breaking even (the rough model includes a 3.4% tax cut at the top tax bracket, which we can backfill with taxes to cover universal healthcare, college, and social security--universal healthcare is about a 1.6% FICA on all personal income, seriously).

That means wherever you have concentrated poverty--lots of poor people, sudden unemployment--you have the biggest absolute and relative impact. For the poorer, the Dividend represents a greater dollar increase in take-home income over 2016 tax policy, and the Dividend represents a greater percentage of their spendable income.

That's an automatic, perfect economic stimulus without deficit. It starts repairing recessions before a recession comes in. These things are considered impossible under modern economic theory, so of course I figured out how to do it in two hours on a weekend.

Don't worry, I'm not just ranting on Slashdot. It seems the most-influential people in the field have taken sudden interest in my research, so this is all quickly becoming somebody else's problem. By September, it will be too late: once I pass the new theory on to more-competent and well-placed interests, it can no longer be stopped.

Re: Alternatives

[Luckyo]

Best evidence for "marxists don't like the poor, they just hate the rich" I've seen in a long time.

Here's a thing. Kardashians haven't become super rich because someone gave their riches to them. They worked hard, doing some really harsh, nasty things that most people wouldn't be willing nor able to do to get where they are for many years. After that, they trained their younger siblings to do the same thing. Who did those harsh, nasty things when they were still children, with ultimate goal of becoming rich.

It's the nature of capitalism. When you have a talent, and have the perseverance to capitalize on it, you overwhelmingly tend to succeed. If you lack either talent of perseverance, you probably won't succeed, because one of the aforementioned people will succeed in your field instead.

Kardashians may be some of the most outwardly vain, nasty people. And they're also among the most hard working, most sacrificing and most successful as a result. If you think they don't work, you're not just ignorant. You're plain stupid. Their work day starts when they wake up, and it ends when they fall asleep on a good day. On a bad day, they're working while they're asleep. Because no matter what, they must continue being what they built themselves to be. Idols for people who pay money for them being their idols. And that means no time off. You're always on the clock. Always being what you're expected to be. If you think this isn't work, you've never worked a day in your life. Because this is the kind of work that is so awful, most people wouldn't do it. And I include myself here. I've worked on the fields several summers of my life, and I would not be able to do work this hard.

Anyone who worked with most successful people knows this. CEO's don't have vacations or time off. If they get a call in the middle of the night while they're on what you think as a vacation, they answer it, and must provide a complex resolution to problems presented to them within a very short time span. Doesn't matter if the child is sick. Doesn't matter is the spouse is angry. Doesn't matter if you are dizzy from being awoken in the middle of the night. If you don't work, there are a hundred newcomers under you who will do this work with pleasure and you will be fired within a few days for failing to meet your obligations.

And they get such calls quite often if they're CEOs of large companies.

Re:A buddy of mine always questions

[El Cubano]

What we have now is an oversupply of labor. Supply and demand is a two way street, but it's tough to get folks to acknowledge that because nobody like to think of themselves as a simple commodity. We're all precious, irreplaceable snowflakes.

I think you are slightly off the mark here. What we have is suboptimal distribution of labor. We have a huge oversupply of unskilled labor and well educated laborers without a specific skill set (think liberal arts majors), while we have a severe shortage of highly skilled laborers (doctors, airline pilots, engineers) and a moderate shortage of skilled trades (construction, electrical, plumbing, steelworkers, welders, etc.).

The reason for the shortage of highly skilled professionals is because of market distortions (e.g., prohibitive cost of malpractice insurance for doctors, or abysmal pay and terrible work/life balance of practically all pilots who don't fly long haul international) and for the shortage of skilled trades the reason is that for the last 30 plus years every kid has been told "you have to go to college to get ahead unless you want to end up with a crappy job as an electrician or construction worker." It turns out that those jobs pay reasonably well and a plumber who gains sufficient experience and starts his or her own business would not have much trouble netting six figures. But that is seen as an "undesirable" occupation.

It doesn't help that there's a small group at the top (math majors, surgeons, top athletes) who are. There's a lot of folks who don't want to see those productivity gains distributed more equitably because it's a point of pride for them. At least that's the only explanation I've come up with why so many oppose things like single payer healthcare.

I'm afraid you lost me here. Also, what does single payer healthcare have to do with any of this? Could you explain?

Then again I've also noticed a lot of those single payer healthcare opponents qualify for Medicare and/or the VA....

Well, those programs aren't freebies. For Medicare, you are forced to pay into it your entire working life and for VA medical care it is a benefit given in exchange for military service. Most jobs in the military are rather underpaid when compared to their civilian equivalents, which is part of why military veteran benefits are as generous as they are. That and being constantly deployed and away from your family sucks.

Now, if you don't like Medicare benefits or the benefits offered to veterans, you are free to lobby to reduce or remove them.

Re:gotta love statistics

[whoever57]

The question is, what performance difference does a $1M CEO bring vs a $21.7M one?

Probably a significant improvement in performance by the $1M CEO (there was a study that showed that lower-paid CEOs tend to perform better).

The idea that CEOs should be paid according to the improvement in the bottom line that they bring is flawed: there is no equivalent downside if the company does badly under their leadership. Yes, their total pay may drop a little, but imagine if it could go negative!

Value to the business?

[Mittengrabber]

I'd hazard that if one individual is worth 312x any other individual in the company it's pointing out a fundamental problem with the structure of your business.

Easy fix, bring back 1910 rules

[cheekyboy]

If you earn more than 100 times salary, your taxes are 70% per dollar above that.

Earn above 200x, taxes are 80%
Earn above 300x, taxes are 90%

How much is enough!

Re:Queue apologists

[cascadingstylesheet]

Who will be along promptly to excuse this with some spurious claims. It never ceases to amaze me how some people are prepared cooperate in their own oppression. They are no different to the victims of domestic violence that continuously return to their abuser.

Queue people who disagree with me ... they of course cannot have any valid thoughts by definition (c'mon, they disagree with me - with me!); they must be idiots or victims of brainwashing.