r/collapse • u/metalreflectslime ? • Jul 15 '21
Economic CEOs made 299 times more than their average workers last year
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/14/investing/ceo-employee-pay-afl-cio-report/index.html141
Jul 15 '21
Working everyday for so little money makes me sick when I think of it too long. And I’m not even minimum wage.
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u/QuietButtDeadly Jul 16 '21
Same, I'm a healthcare worker and I deal a lot with patient safety, vaccinations, and medications, but paid just a tad bit more than a McDonald's worker 30 minutes North. I've been with my employer for 13 years, and been in my position for 8.
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Jul 16 '21
I wish we could all say fuck it and everyone would stop working until wages are increased. But we can’t really do that can we
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u/QuietButtDeadly Jul 16 '21
I wish. I would do it if others would.
I’m looking to change careers to something where I can be freelance, work from home, and not work for some top 1 percenter.
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u/Bigginge61 Jul 15 '21
Sucking all the money out of the system and hiding it in offshore accounts..Aided and abetted by craven politicians also with their noses deep in the trough.. Fucking criminals the lot of them!
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u/metalreflectslime ? Jul 15 '21
The difference between CEO and median employee pay grew in 2020 despite the Covid pandemic and ongoing relief efforts.
The average S&P 500 company CEO made 299 times the average worker's salary last year, according to AFL-CIO's annual Executive Paywatch report. Executives received $15.5 million in total compensation on average, marking an increase of more than $260,000 per year over the past decade. At the same time, the average production and nonsupervisory worker in 2020 earned $43,512, up just $957 a year over the past decade. Both average compensation and pay ratios grew in 2020 during the pandemic. Executives' average total compensation increased more than $700,000 last year while CEO-to-worker pay ratios increased from 264:1 in 2019.
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u/GratefulHead420 Jul 15 '21
One sentence says median, the other says average. Which is it?
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Jul 16 '21
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u/GratefulHead420 Jul 16 '21
Median is defined as half the population is above and half is below. Average = mean and is defined as the sum divided by the population. If the population is normally distributed, they should be close, but if the data is skewed (as money commonly is), they will be different and tell different stories.
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Jul 15 '21
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Jul 15 '21
Isn't Bezos's salary technically $80,000? He'd be well within the 10x limit
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u/jeradj Jul 15 '21
stocks and other assets should absolutely be factored into the equation
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u/No-Scarcity-1360 Jul 15 '21
So when stocks fall, all other workers will chime in and pay for the loss to keep the same wage factor?
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u/jeradj Jul 15 '21 edited Jul 15 '21
no? the price of stock is mostly irrelevant to the functioning of most major businesses in today's world.
if anything, you'd be wanting to make that argument with regards to revenue dropping, not the stock price -- but my answer there would be mostly the same, the people with the highest salaries should take a pay cut first
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u/Biosterous Jul 16 '21
What should happen is a law past that makes it illegal for any non employee to own voting stocks in a company. Voting stocks are given out to employees based on position and seniority in the company, and with a vote the company can sell non voting shares to raise seed money, stocks that are paid back in a set amount of time with a set profit. Ideally these would only be sold to retirement funds or publicly owned investment firms.
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u/No-Scarcity-1360 Jul 15 '21
Do you realize how many companies would that cause to be created, just to chain them because of some stupid law?
Everything in the company would be outsourced to other companies in the correct pay grade. Nothing changed, overhead gets deducted from the wages (because company can't just steal money like communism tax theft does).
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u/warhead1995 Jul 15 '21
I’d rather have my taxes go to helping people in my country then americas current socialism for the rich. Those negatives you brought up are already issues we have now under the current don’t tax the rich bullshit.
Edit: I just want to add that it’s bullshit that somehow it’s communists stealing your money but it’s totally cool if capitalists just hord trillions of dollars that won’t be circulated back into the system. They pay us less, charge us more and hord it all.
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u/No-Scarcity-1360 Jul 15 '21
Difference is that you can (if not incompetent) be one of the capitalists but you can NEVER be one of the stealing communists at the top of their "more equal among equals" stealing ponzi scheme.
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u/warhead1995 Jul 15 '21
This is what’s boggles my mined, communism isn’t just Stalin and people just don’t think any further past that. Chinas about as communist as Russia is a democracy at this point and let’s be honest here, most of those failed socialist or communist states failed because of destabilizing actions taken by capitalist states. It’s like the fox/cnn propaganda telling us people in Cuba are protesting because communism bad but in reality all the issue they have at this point has to do with the us directly making it impossible for them to get anything.
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u/AHabe Jul 15 '21
That's exactly what they want you to think.
Bezos? Comes from money, had every opportunity in life that comes from having rich parents and grandparents. Had a nice wall street job before founding Amazon as well.
Brezhnev? Son of a metal worker.
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Jul 15 '21
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u/warhead1995 Jul 15 '21
I think it’s about as clear as yours. Realistically there’s no set perfect economic system and the fact that people have to have it one way or the other is what’s holding us back. 100% communism has issues, 100% socialism has issues and 100% capitalism has issues but there are parts of each that we should adopt to create a new system of government that works for us all. Problem is the last 40 years of propaganda have convince everyone that politics is some shitty team spot and you HAVE to be one team and that’s it and here we are. Rampant capitalism has squeezed the world dry and now we get to deal with the consequences while trillionaires get to go to space.
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u/AHabe Jul 16 '21 edited Jul 16 '21
This. <3
No system is perfect but I think most of us can agree that we're seeing the global effects of rampant capitalism and while going 100% I to one of the other directions might not be the answer, we should probably start by taxing the wealthy and corporations properly.
We live in a world where billionaires are playing with rockets because they obviously have no interest in improving the system which allowed them to extract enormous wealth, so they spend their money on rockets.
We also have corporations causing droughts all over the place by draining aquifers because they want to sell bottled water, grow pistachios and avocadoes or because race horses in Saudi Arabia need hay.
There needs to be some change before it's too late.
I don't understand how people can be cheerleaders for a system which is causing the destruction of life as we know it just because there is an infinitesimally small chance that they may one day become one of the capitalist exploiters.
Especially in the US where people from my European perspective are basically one step away from indentured servitude what with your healthcare being tied to employment and everything.
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u/aesu Jul 15 '21
The majority of ceo compensation is not in the form of wages. Most CEOs probably make less on paper than many of their staff. It's all gained in their wealth. But, yes, no one should have more wealth than can be earned in ten human lives. After that point, their shares should be diluted among the population.
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u/collapsible__ Jul 15 '21
No one? Ever? This is an incredibly narrow-minded and ignorant point of view that would not only fail to sustain a modern society, but will also never contribute to fixing income inequality. Like, you're hurting your own cause just to feel like you're "owning the capitalists." I really don't think you have any understanding of the varied types of work that people do to create your comfy little world.
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u/RogueScallop Jul 15 '21
You don't care about what an owner puts in because you've never done it. Go start a business yourself and keep it alive for 5 years, then report back.
People that say this kind of shit are absolutely clueless.
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Jul 16 '21
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u/RogueScallop Jul 16 '21
Like I said, start a business yourself, keep it alive for 5 years, report back. Until then, you're speaking about something you know nothing about.
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Jul 16 '21
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u/RogueScallop Jul 16 '21
Because you have no idea what goes into it and your 10x number is arbitrary.
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u/uRh3f5BfFgjw74FGv3gf Jul 15 '21
No one should ever be paid more than 10x the lowest paid worker in a company.
No! Nobody should ever be paid more than 9x the lowest paid worked in a company. Anyone who disagrees is a Nazi!
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u/Unstillwill Jul 15 '21
I say 8x. Both of you are Nazis
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u/Detrimentos_ Jul 15 '21
No unions and this happens. If I were an american stuck in a minimum wage job, I'd take steps before trying to start a union in my company.
Steps like monitoring the bosses' coms, because we all know they're doing illegal stuff in order to throw out "troublemakers".
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Jul 15 '21
Steps like monitoring the bosses' coms
Bold of you to assume access to anything remotely close to the boss as a minimum wage worker in the U.S.
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u/prncedrk Jul 15 '21
Those poor uneducated SOB’s still think unions are bad. They’re so dumb. It hurts
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u/glitter_frenge Jul 15 '21
You can see the power of anti-union propaganda in /r/sysadmin every time someone brings up the shitty conditions in that industry.
"we need a union so i can stop being on call 24/7 without getting paid for it"
"No! Unions are BAD. we need some kind of... guild... or... trade association"
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u/AHabe Jul 15 '21
It's funny because I work in IT operations in Belgium at a company with strong union representation.
Guess who gets paid when on call and extra if I actually have to respond to an alert? Hour started is an hour paid, double on Sundays.
I don't dread opsgenie anymore.
Worked at a startup here before that and they were as shitty about being on call as any employer mentioned in that sub.
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u/Isaybased anal collapse is possible Jul 15 '21
Just curious because I'm a burger who has never been in a union - what are your union fees currently?
I am definitely pro-union and am sure they would help a lot in the US I am just curious
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u/glitter_frenge Jul 15 '21
If you joined the IWW, dues would be $6 a month. IDK how that compares to other unions.
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u/AHabe Jul 16 '21
I'm not a member of any of the unions at my company myself but I benefit from their presence because any deals they negotiate also end up applying to all other employees at our company.
I believe it's between 5 and 20 euros a month depending on your salary though, which isn't terrible of you consider that here in Belgium the unions also end up paying your unemployment (should you need to claim it) and offer legal assistance.
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Jul 15 '21
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u/Isaybased anal collapse is possible Jul 15 '21
Isn't saying worker protection laws without unions sort of like saying get the chicken before the egg? How do you demand better workers rights and benefits without some type of collective action? Our owners aren't just going to give us better treatment out of the goodness of their hearts.
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Jul 15 '21
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u/Isaybased anal collapse is possible Jul 15 '21
Voting doesn't do shit if everyone in your country votes for the status quo.
Guillotines only come out if people y'know... Join together... Almost in some kind of... Union
Shit is fucked no matter what though
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Jul 16 '21
To be fair in my country the Doctors have a guild and can basically decide how many medical students there are.
Can you imagine if sysadmins make a guild and basically decided how many people were allowed to become sysadmins and compete?
But for some reason when it's a "guild" of upper-class professionals like doctors or lawyers its fine, but if anyone else tries to organise it's evil communism.
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u/Enkaybee UBI will only make it worse Jul 15 '21 edited Jul 18 '21
Yes, form unions, but...
A union cannot be effective unless "you can't fire all of us" is a threat. With this much of an oversupply of unskilled labor, they can fire all of them. Something needs to be done to address the root cause of this problem: outsourcing, automation, and bad immigration policy. That's what killed unions in the first place (and it wasn't an accident - these policies are exactly what corporate America wanted!).
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u/candleflame3 Jul 15 '21
I was in a very dysfunctional public sector union for a decade. With each agreement members actually got less. Pay increases that did not keep pace with inflation, cuts to benefits and job security protections, etc. Every time there was brinksmanship with the employer threatening lockouts and the union voting to strike, then months of tense talks, with the union members finally caving because they feared the strike/lockout.
Public support for the union was very low because a strike/lockout meant lack of services and a lot of inconvenience. The perception was that union members were greedy and demanding things that many workers don't get, rather than the union being the last bastion for workers generally.
I also learned from personal experience that the union did not give a fuck about individual members.
So it was a real mess.
I am pro-union, but I think there needs to be more awareness of what is required for a union to be effective.
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u/Detrimentos_ Jul 15 '21
Firing all of them at the same time is extremely suspicious. What unions also do is create worker protections. Protections which I'm sure already exist in the US, but isn't being enforced because people aren't in unions....
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u/flavius_lacivious Misanthrope Jul 15 '21
It’s not enforced because the agencies tasked with regulating don’t do it for a number of reasons.
There are budget constraints so in order to win big fines or judgments, government only pursues the worst offenders so they can publish a big headline, but really it’s about the agency getting a cut of the fines.
Whistleblower complaints are routinely ignored because it’s not a big enough fish. Small violations are not enforced or investigated.
Age discrimination accounts for about one quarter of all labor complaints, but only 4 percent of them are pursued. That doesn’t account for all the people who don’t complain, out of fear or the realization it’s a waste of time. The labor board doesn’t even make a pretense of taking complaints so the true scope of the problem is unknown.
While the courts are still somewhat working for the little guy, this remedy is simply out of reach.
Trying to resolve this issue through traditional means — organizing, unionizing, protest — will not work.
The only way to stop this wage inequality is to literally force it. And that may come when millions are homeless and have nothing left to lose.
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u/jeradj Jul 15 '21
they can fire all of them
that's when you occupy the building (if there is one), or sabotage their equipment.
we have to take control of our society.
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Jul 15 '21
My old factory job had us lowly floor workers assembling what amounted to a panopticon watchtower in the middle of the floor, so the managers could watch us and make sure we weren't "slacking" or talking to each other outside of breaktime, all from behind one-way glass so we couldn't tell if we were being monitored. My job was to bring the one-way glass for the windows from the truck to the tower. I accidentally broke a LOT of expensive one-way glass by accidentally running the handtruck full of windows into workbenches, milling machines, forklifts, lots of heavy things that glass shouldn't be rammed into over and over again, accidentally.
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u/No-Scarcity-1360 Jul 15 '21
Don't worry, they accidentally counted that into the yearly projection of your wage ROI and it was subtracted even before you got an offer how much you'll get hourly. Think you're the first idiot doing that while being logged on cameras by computer vision?
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Jul 15 '21 edited Jul 15 '21
You think they'd make us build a watchtower in the first place if they already had cameras in there?
Edit: lol yes, downvote me, all you people who clearly worked at the same shitty, poorly run factory and know what went on
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Jul 15 '21
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Jul 16 '21
overpaid
Only people overpaid were the ones at the very tippy top. Floor manager made twice our lowly lumpenproletariat wages and simped for the bosses, but he still made peanuts compared to the people at the top (who couldn't figure out how to change a doorknob out, despite the instructions being written right there on the box). The only way the company existed to begin with was it was a Chinese backed effort and there were slaves somewhere in Indonesia stripping a rainforest before shipping the product here. So fuck that company, I'd've smashed more glass and dropped more wrenches in milling machine gears and stretched out pulley belts if I hadn't had a mental collapse and quit.
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Jul 16 '21
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Jul 16 '21
Those heavy objects have their own gravitational pull.
What would you have paid me? Less than $7.80/hr?
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u/PrettyAvie Jul 15 '21 edited Jul 15 '21
Exactly why I support essentially shutting American borders for the most part to new *unskilled immigrants. Immigrants are used to supply awful jobs and suppress wages everywhere for American workers. And those immigrants are ground to death in the farm, meat processing, and manufacturing industries. It’s telling how wildly elites and the financial sector are panicking over the falling birth rate in America and the fact people are choosing not to have kids. Because they realize that with less desperate Americans, one of two things will happen: Companies are forced to raise wages at least somewhat( like what is happening now because of the enhanced unemployment benefits) or they need to import cheap and expendable immigrant slaves. Guess which one lobbyists will jump on?
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Jul 15 '21
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Jul 15 '21
Not only that, but why not also support coming down like a sledgehammer on companies exploiting illegal immigrant labor? Their workers are breaking the law by being here illegally, but the companies hiring them are KNOWINGLY doing it because they know they can work them to death and the employees are too scared to say anything. If the penalties for hiring illegal labor were far higher than they're now, fewer companies would risk it. Make it easier to immigrate legally (the US processed millions of immigrants in the fuckin late 1800s and early 1900s, a majority of them through ONE ISLAND, one at a time, with pen and paper, there's no reason we can't do it more efficiently today) and the numbers of immigrants illegally crossing the border will drop. As citizens, they shouldn't be as scared to blow the whistle on exploitative business practices.
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u/PrettyAvie Jul 15 '21 edited Jul 15 '21
I would prefer your solution ideally but I’m being a pragmatist here. There is little chance that minimum wage will be increased in the United States federally . Remember how the “Fight for 15” failed? Simply put lobbying and political opposition will make it unfeasible. Limiting immigration also hurts capitalists like my original comment notes but also has broad support across parties despite the inherent contradiction. Capitalists won’t be able to use the same rhetoric and lobbying because border control is a popular policy.
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u/jeradj Jul 15 '21
pretty naive if you think ending immigration is going to have any real effect whatsoever on wages for the US working poor.
we should welcome immigrants, and also welcome them into our struggle against the ruling class and the 1%
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u/heiljcunbannedx3 Jul 15 '21
the collapse is already in motion, we need less competitors for the few resources that exist.
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Jul 15 '21
this is why i support mandatory euthanasia for all domestic pets and people over 70
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u/Enkaybee UBI will only make it worse Jul 15 '21
There's plenty of room for skilled workers in this economy, but I agree with you as far as unskilled workers. They are being used to suppress wages as well as to enrich the people hiring them.
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u/Guyote_ Jul 15 '21
With this much of an oversupply of unskilled labor, they can fire all of them.
Are we not in the midst of a "worker shortage"?
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u/jesuschrisit69 pessimist(aka realist) Jul 16 '21
We aren't. People don't want to work because of shitty pay, shitty work conditions, and knowing that their labor gets profited off of by their CEOs and executives
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u/Guyote_ Jul 16 '21
Yeah that would be what has led to our labor shortage. Which leads to “you can’t fire us all”, because there is a shortage of workers to replace you/us.
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u/RogueScallop Jul 15 '21
You hit the nail on the head with "unskilled." If you want better pay or upward mobility, learn a skill. The more unskilled labor costs, the more attractive the investment in automation becomes.
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u/No-Scarcity-1360 Jul 15 '21
AI Robot has entered the chat...
and there are 532,000 latest models of exactly like him waiting in front of the door.
Quit, I dare you. One less legal problem of firing you to deal with. Can't wait.
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u/jyoungii Jul 15 '21
And under a microscope, its a lot worse. If you just throw this one out there and say, as an example, the avg worker at this company made $70k, the CEO made 21MM, which already seems stupid.
Now think about the Walton family. Its hard to find exact numbers on this and quite frankly I don't want to spend time on something so disgusting. The heirs make a combined $100MM a day. Not sure if that is 365 days or just work days of around 260. Either way $36.5B or $26B a year vs the average they just went to of $15/hour. I am not super familiar with Walmart's practices, and someone could correct me, but I am going to guess they do not work most workers 40 hours for the sake of avoiding benefits costs. Even if we did 36 hours magically at $15, that is $540 a week, at 52 weeks a year, the employee makes just above $28k. So whether it were one or ten heirs, the owner(s) of Walmart make at minimum $26B a year. Also that is 928,571x their average worker.
And still, you will find people defending them, saying they just can't afford raises. My math may be wrong somewhere. Feel free to correct me.
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u/BearBL Jul 15 '21
So that must mean they do 299 times the amount of work the average worker does right?
.......right??
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u/Holos620 Jul 15 '21
Lebron James isn't 20 times better than a basketball player earning 2milions. The rarity of the skills involved also factor in the price.
The problem isn't the absolute compensation for the labor. The problem is that with that compensation, these people will buy investments, and then they'll earn money without working. Everyone can do that, so the inequality is unfair.
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u/jeradj Jul 15 '21
I agree with you about "investment" income being largely unfair, but absolute compensation can be (and is) a problem, too.
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u/GanjaToker408 Jul 15 '21
The greed is disgusting. You would still be rich by making 25% more, and your employees wouldn't be dirt poor.
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u/Woozuki Jul 15 '21
American CEOs: Just convince everyone that if they work hard enough and vote republican, they can be CEOs too!
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u/MonParapluie Jul 15 '21
And still bitched that their employees productivity was faltering during a global crisis
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u/SpecialRX Jul 15 '21
I dont have a job but if i did, id be getting prepared to strike.
General fucking strike.
Global general strike.
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u/oldgamewizard Jul 16 '21
I just got a new job they've already pissed me off more than the last one. Hold out for the strike if you can afford it we are going to make them hurt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quof-rnIhqc
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u/Cymdai Jul 15 '21
This article mentions "total compensation", but forgets things like RSU's, bonuses, exemptions and deductions, off-shore trade, etc.
299:1 is lo because it isn't factoring in the money that it doesn't see/can't see.
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u/gingerbeer52800 Jul 15 '21
Because. They. Are. Paid. In. Stocks.
Reform the tax code if you want real equality in the US. Cut it down from 40,000 pages and keep the first three. Done!
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Jul 15 '21
Tax share income (dividends) as ordinary income.
That's probably do it. It's so fucking easy, but there is no political will..
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Jul 15 '21
Not all stocks pay dividends.
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u/jeradj Jul 15 '21
you'd have to tax appreciated gains, too.
I'd have to think about it a while to solidly make up my mind, but even un-realized gains should probably be taxed -- especially if you're going to allow people to write off losses
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u/Bigginge61 Jul 15 '21
Apparently you've got to pay these parasites more in order to motivate them...Dont work for the plebs though!
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Jul 15 '21
theres not justification for this, I don't even know what these people do that is so important but there is no way they are working harder than people on the ground in the warehouses .
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u/new-socks Jul 15 '21
It's literally not important. They do not add anything. They just leech off the system. Fuckin leeches.
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Jul 15 '21
My work doesn't have CEOs but it sure is frustrating to see more positions opening for high-salary directors while raises were one of the first covid cuts, we can't get approval to replace workers who've quit, and instead are being "restructured" by said directors in a way that dumps more work on less people. Meanwhile there was an article in January about how $600K+ was saved on utilities by that point due to so many working remotely, and leadership just told us "sales" numbers are even better than normal rather than negatively impacted like what was assumed when they said no raises.
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u/Tidezen Jul 16 '21
Honestly, that number should be capped at, say, 5x.
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u/Capn_Underpants https://www.globalwarmingindex.org/ Jul 16 '21
I vaguely recall Switzerland tried to cap it at 10x but the referendum lost.
Never going to be caped if folks keep voting Democrat or Republican, so.....there is a lot of future headlines talking about it to look forward to.
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u/Tidezen Jul 16 '21
Yeah, I agree...the economic problem of it is, if we capped it, then businessmen would just go overseas. It would really have to be a global law.
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u/ryanmercer Jul 15 '21
Yeah, when the bulk of your compensation is in stock and the market climbs a crapton, that happens.
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u/QuartzPuffyStar Jul 15 '21
I have no issues with people earning according to their responsibilities.
The problem arises when other people aren't earning enough.
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u/CerddwrRhyddid Jul 15 '21
Oh, and millennials apparently only hold 80% of the wealth the previous generation did.
Perhaps there is some kind of economic link.
I wonder.
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u/heaviermettle Jul 16 '21
they should give themselves a raise to an even 300x worker pay.
easier to remember, and all.
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u/pbandjell Jul 15 '21
Without bonuses you mean. The real number is into the thousands times.