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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.
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our education, like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so that we ill be able to build up our future for our children.
It's fine. The average boss works 312 times harder than their average employee, so it's all good.
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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'
Make the World Venezuela Again!
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.
The real issues is not in the number.
It's in the fact that these guys basically decide their own salaries. Mr. Boss is the CEO of company A, and sits on the board of company B and C. Mr. Big, meanwhile, is CEO of company B, but sits on the board of A and C, and Mr. Greedy is CEO of C and on the board of A and B.
Guess what they will decide when it comes to yearly reviews and salary adjustments.
The system is broken because a relatively small in group decides amongst themselves, instead of the independent outside review that the system is intended to have. It doesn't even need to have all companies working like that - company D which has a clean board and CEO, will not be able to resist the upwards pull of the others, because the CEO of D one day will get an offer from A, or just look at it, and see that the CEO there gets 200% more, and he will ask his board why he doesn't and what they will do to stop him from going there.
This kind of built-in dilemma is exactly where government oversight and regulation comes into play, when the system is broken and needs outside interference to right itself. Because no publicly traded company will start with the change, because doing so just isn't a rational decision.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
To my mind this is pretty simply - a person should be paid a sliding scale based on how many people their work directly impacts, combined with how close they are to affecting customers.
You will not be able to define that clearly.
The work of the cleaning crew, for example, impacts everyone in the company. The work of your genius inventor, on the other hand, impacts nobody directly.
And, quite honestly, the work of the CEO most of the time affects very few people.
What you mean is potential impact. The CEO could make a decision that affects everyone greatly, while the cleaning crew cannot - they do their job but don't make decisions.
But between the extremes, you won't be able to define the scale cleanly. Who is more meaningful, the developer or the sysadmin?
A mail guy or someone working a front desk? Come on, they are not offering much real value
Really? Do without them for a month and see how well that goes.
Every job in a company is important, otherwise the company would not pay someone to do it.
The problem of fair payment is not a simple one, and a blanket solution will not work. What we have right now is actually not that bad (a market system), except that it is skewed on both ends - on the low end, people are forced to accept bad conditions because unemployment is high and very undesireable, and on the high end, people get ridiculous salaries and aren't reviewed properly because they are all part of the same circle-jerk group.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We're all precious, irreplaceable snowflakes. It doesn't help that there's a small group at the top (math majors, surgeons, top athletes) who are.
You touched upon the real problem there, but didn't grab it.
This, exactly, is the problem. Every CEO of every major company these days is paid like a precious, one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable snowflake. Very few actually are. Thanks to my career choices I've worked directly with a good number of top-level executives in several companies from small to 5000+ employees.
Many of these people are very competent and very hard-working. Some of them are brilliant. Most of them could not be replaced without a considerable change in the company direction and culture as their personality influences everyone down the chain.
Most of them deserves to be paid several times what I earn, and I earn not bad.
But not one of them is irreplaceable. Not one of them needs to have his salary take up its own position in the company budget. Not in one case would the entire company crumble if he left. There would be a shock wave, sure. There would be changes, sure. But after some adjustments, business would go on.
There are some iconic leaders who are or would be missed. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk - you can barely imagine their companies without them.
But the number of CEOs is far larger than the number of iconic CEOs. Too many of them believe that they are irreplaceable, and too many boards think the same (because guess who sits on those boards?).
The 20x figure is a number you can justify on a rational basis. The 300+ times is a system spiralling out of control, because too many snowflakes think they are individually important, and refuse to admit that to the person throwing the snowball, they really don't matter one bit.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"The biggest problem in the US right now is access to healthcare, but no one has a reasonable plan."
Bullshit! Medicare For All is a very, very reasonable plan...unless you suck on the Fox News tit, in which case "you should have worked harder, loser!" is a reasonable plan.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A mail guy or someone working a front desk? Come on, they are not offering much real value and pay should be commensurate with that basic fact.
People do crappy jobs because they lack the option to not do crappy jobs. However, if we had UBI that let people survive without a job then I have a feeling that all the those "unimportant" people would suddenly become far more scarce. Naturally clowns like you would scream that you need to import more labor because of a "labor shortage" when the reality is that you just aren't offering enough money for positions.
The severe depression of wages has resulted in a wage slave economy where you either work for the peanuts they offer or you die.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I don't care that some people have much more than me, I am more worried that I don't have more.
Um... since we live in a world where resources are finite, isn't that just two ways of expressing the exact same thing. I mean I don't care about a yacht or a mansion either, but we are all still pulling from the same limited resource pool.
?
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 only extremists here are the Capitalsts. Even Whisper that perhaps healthcare should be handlef differently and they screech about Communism. Just look how they continue to hiss and snarl over Obamacare even though the plan was modeled after one of their own.
For the most part, the Marxists here are just in the fevered minds of the Capitalists.
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.
I don't think you would be satisfied with Medicare. You'd constantly be complaining.
Everyone 65 or older has Medicare. Do they complain, of course. Can there be improvements, certainly. But it's a system that is working for millions of americans and there is no reason that it can't be expanded.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
Bill Gate's won his fortune through very aggressive business tactics, destroying any competition through means that were borderline illegal - and in a few cases crossed over that line. Deliberate incompetibilities to break rival products, the use of bundling to destroy entire markets, OEM exclusivity agreements to prevent new competitors gaining even a sliver of market share. His tactics were so underhanded that Microsoft under his rule became the epitome of the corrupt mega-corp, earning the nickname Micro$oft. It hasn't changed too much since he left.
He's done a lot of charitable work with his ill-gotten gains, but they were still ill-gotten.
Stupid fucking idiots, like you, fuck everything up.
https://www.snopes.com/news/20...
The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.
Or you could have paid attention in your high school world history class, and not been so fucking clueless for your life. Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
That's $21M that goes back into the economy instead of an offshore hedge fund.
But I bet you can find someone who can run that company for $500,000. Now, you've got $20.5million to redistribute to employees, and $20.5million that goes back into the economy to create other jobs instead of an offshore hedge fund.
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. For all we know, you could get a competent CEO for a couple of hundred thousand a year and a company car. It'll look good on the resume and people like titles. No one really knows the true market value of a CEO. What you have is this unspoken "minimum wage for CEOs" that boards of directors are convinced they need to pay based on absolutely nothing. And the reason boards of directors have this unspoken rule is because many of them are CEOs of other companies or former CEOs or golfing buddies of everyone who will ever be considered for the job. It's all "scratch my back and I'll give you a big sloppy blowjob".
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
While economics is not a zero-sum game, productivity is. Everything that's consumed must be produced. So prices are just the sum total of everyone's wages (how much money they get for producing stuff), divided by the sum total of what everyone produces. If aggregate productivity holds constant while a greater percentage of total wages are going to CEOs, then that leaves less money for everyone else to buy the same amount of stuff. And prices as a proportion of disposable income go up.*
For a minimum wage in particular, economic activity is maximized when the wages people receive is proportional to their contribution to productivity.
* The catch is that we're assuming aggregate productivity holds constant. If you look at GDP per capita, the U.S. is near the top despite having high income inequality. Likewise, Communist countries (which strive for extreme equality) are near the bottom. So some income inequality is necessary to maximize average productivity. The question becomes how much inequality you're willing to tolerate in order to achieve higher productivity. Or conversely, how much productivity you're willing to give up in order to achieve greater equality. There's no single "right" answer here - some countries will want greater equality, some greater productivity.
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!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Assume the CEO goes from $21M to $0 and redistribute among the 235,000 employees. Everyone gets less than $100 a year.
That's not the point.
What the inequality of wealth brings is inequality of power. Those at the top of the food chain can make and enforce decisions that benefit them financially. They can get laws passed, tax breaks, government restrictions lifted and politicians elected to suit their needs, and the resultant damage to everybody else is worth far more than $100.
showcasing how stupid Americans can be
...when faced with inappropriate trick questions in highly stressful situations. Setting aside the comedic value of this answer, I don't think many people would be able to yield a usably better one in that girl's place.
Ezekiel 23:20
What the inequality of wealth brings is inequality of power. Those at the top of the food chain can make and enforce decisions that benefit them financially.
The reason some people have influence over government is not that they are wealthy, its because some people in government are for sale. The solution to that is not to create more government, you fucking retards.
Yes, clearly the solution is to get rid of all governmental checks and balances, however inadequate, as once they are free from constraints, the wealthy only ever act for the public good.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
'Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it' (Goebbels).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Me neither, but I don't think those "many people" would appear live on TV on a high level competition.
If you get there and you're not prepared, you deserve the flak.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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!
Is it working, or are they complaining?
People complaining about shit doesn't mean that shit ain't workin'.
Hell, there are CEOs complaining they don't make enough.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
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.
Probably for the same reason I, over here in Europe, are happy with earning about 1/5 or even less of what I'd make in the US with what I can do: Comfort.
You know, I enjoy being able to go out on the street and know that I won't get mugged just because I went to the wrong part of the town. It's also comforting to know that if I get sick, I will be treated and I will be treated in any hospital I go to, not just whatever my insurance company has a contract with. I also enjoy a month or more of paid vacation time. I also enjoy working in an environment that isn't more like a prison than an office. I enjoy the occasional beer for lunch in the office with my boss.
I did work in the US for a while. A short while. The US is a bit like Disney World for the average European. A great place for a vacation and you can easily spend a fortune there on fun, but you don't want to work there if your life depended on it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't think many people would be able to yield a usably better one in that girl's place.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Probably not many beauty pageant participants, or high school drop-outs, or athletes that rode a railroad to fame based on their talent, and education was a distraction, but believe it or not, there are many of us who have to answer far more difficult questions on the spot on a daily basis. Fortunately, high school generally preps you for being able to do that. Or at least it did "back in my day"
I mean no disrespect toward, or intent to generalize the women in beauty pageants, but do you for some reason think that particular program selects for education or intelligence?
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.
And hoarding really is the fucking problem in my eyes with those people.
Their money hidden under their $80,000 bed, so to speak, doesn't do the economy one bit of good, and they go through extensive troubles to make sure their assets are safe from the risks that other people have to endure. This is why the rich get richer, even when the market blows out through the floor.
I've never had a problem with rich dudes making fuck tons of money for being successful.
How, I think anyone who doesn't look at the current situation and see just what level of wealth they have acquired in comparison to everyone else, and immediately see a huge fucking problem should be shot while there's still fucking time.
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
So you're fighting against imaginary foes? And injecting misogyny into it by stigmatising victims of domestic abuse? How'd this get modded up?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The idea that the top executive is an employee of the corporation has long ago faded. Now the top executive is more like a mafia don getting "a cut of the take," like the corporation is a criminal organization.
E Proelio Veritas.
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.
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.
There are plenty of decent and enterprising people who will happily do the job of CEO for a decent 6-figure salary. Good riddance to the psychopathic greedmonsters who demand to be paid like gods.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Capitalism has been the best system by far so far in reducing poverty. For example, we beat the most optimistic UN projections of beating world hunger by several years, and we're well on track to eliminate it right now.
Problem is, mass media in the West is utterly penetrated by marxists who have no interest in telling you this. Instead they tell you about "poverty of the rich". People who are poor and who's biggest problem is that they're eating too much, and as a result, have an "obesity crisis".
A fitting description for poor in a capitalist system. Their problem is that there's so much excess, that even the poor can afford to get fat.
a ruling class has always been able to obtain a disproportionate amount of wealth relative to the value they add. Whether it's kings and queens or the heads of mega-Corporations.
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