CEOs made 299 times more than their average workers last year
cnn.com
cnn.com
CEO productivity hasn't increased a single bit in the last 100 years, and worker productivity has increased a lot. For our efforts, we have to return to our offices after asking to continue to work from home and after proving that telecommuting en masse works just fine. With a perfect performance evaluation we get raises that are less than inflation. And worst of all, CEOs and other executive pay increases dramatically each and every year.
At some point a critical number of people are going to notice this happening. I already see people talking about it in a few online communities.
I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but generally, the worse things get, the worse the outcome will be.
French Revolution is definitely a display of lack of freedom followed by the rule of absolute power.
Yes, I'm about to resume scrolling through my phone.
>Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to work to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” ― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait
It's certainly nothing to sneeze at, but many of them were making more before they went into politics. And most of them have to maintain two homes, one in DC and another in their district. It's a small multiple of US average worker salary, but less than one order of magnitude (except for the President, who makes as much as ~12 average Americans).
Most are rich, but they were rich before. It's expensive to go into politics. It's not impossible to get into Congress without being rich, but most are.
Then there's the regulatory capture of being a politician then going to work for the companies that lobbied them.
They start rich, they get richer.
CEOs are everywhere, and easily swapped out.
When I pay for a product I want the majority of my payment to go to the workers responsible for realizing the product not the CEO telling the workers what to do. We all know a company is destroyed if you remove all the workers, but not if you remove a CEO. The same cannot be said of celebrities.
Additionally I'm a fucking worker as are most people here. So of course it's a problem for me if the CEO is taking something that isnt considered a fair share by workers. I'm also 100 percent fucking aware of what my CEO actually does and how much he actually contributes.
What amazes me is the leaps of logic that CEOs formulate in order to justify their crimes and lie to themselves.
[0]I’m not trying to put down their musical or performance talent, just commenting on the fact that even the greatest entertainment products are still just entertainment products and certainly don’t justify a huge x compared to CEO’s just because one song is more popular than another.
I think it's quite narrow minded and downright evil to paint a picture as if this is what I'm doing.
I NEVER said the CEO doesn't matter. But certainly he doesn't matter as much as you and their salaries imply. Jobs died, guess what happened to Apple? Nothing. Steve jobs matters, but along with every other CEO in the world, if he suddenly dies, life goes on and not much happens to the company.
Additionally what the hell is this garbage about assembly workers pushing buttons? That's just one step in a highly complex process. There's designers, engineers, programmers and assembly workers. All of these people combined contribute far more than Steve Jobs saying, "build me a touch screen phone." Certainly you need someone to give the order but in no way is this person a critical part of the equation. You saying this is a deliberate distortion of what I am saying. The best word to describe it is: lies.
>[0]I’m not trying to put down their musical or performance talent, just commenting on the fact that even the greatest entertainment products are still just entertainment products and certainly don’t justify a huge x compared to CEO’s just because one song is more popular than another.
Yeah great job covering your ass while distorting and twisting my point. No dude. CEO's as they stand today deserve far less than celebrities. The entire operation falls apart without a celebrity. Not so for the CEO.
CEOs are an important part the equation for a product. But they are also the least important when compared to the rest of pipeline. The CEO is replaceable, the pipeline is not.
Is it fair that Joan shows up to work everyday at the Amazon warehouse busting her back, while Jeff works from his private plane making more money in few hours than Joan will ever see in a lifetime? That's what amazes me...
Football players destroy their bodies for 2-4 years (average career length) of ~$860,000/year (median NFL salary). Be angry at football team owners instead.
There are ~13,780 "Athletes, Coaches, Umpires, and Related Workers" in the US making a mean of $86,090 for a total of $1.2B. (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_711200.htm)
There are ~202,360 "Chief Executives" making a mean of $ 197,840 for a total of $40B. (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes111011.htm)
Football players and pop stars get their own share of grief (remember the song "Money for Nothin'"?). Probably more than an appropriate 1/33 as much grief.
To be able to make your company successful is one thing but to make it successful in multiple regions with globally distributed supply chains is a completely different story where complexities increase x299?
Generally speaking, this is why I try to work/shop/bank with co-ops, credit unions, mutual insurances, and other not-for-profits.
[1] https://aflcio.org/executive-paywatch/company-pay-ratios
Out of curiosity, I just googled the average salary for Aberocrombie & Fitch. Indeed.com shows $23k for a “Stocking Associate” and $38k for a warehouse worker [1]. Hardly Silicon Valley-level salaries, but way above the bogus $1820 figure these guys used to get their 6565:1 ratio.
Is it making the average worker poorer?
Or somehow more miserable (barring base jealousy)?
Almost certainly, yes.
The economy is not a fixed pie, but unless it's the CEO driving the productivity gains of a company, there's no real reason to give them a more and more outsized share of the revenue. It could go to the workers, or the shareholders.
All production is limited by rate of available energy and/or available extraction of material.
It is actually more accurate to say the economy is a fixed pie than it is to ludicrously say the economy is a source of infinite wealth.
This means that CEOs with proven experience can drive up the price of CEOs drastically.
Meanwhile if you hire 1000 people to work in your stores you are going to get an average and getting a little better than average is what you can hope for, so individual workers cannot press the price up.
People start companies because that’s what they enjoy doing.
^ for Founder / CEOs
These days it seems most of the extravagant CEO pay is going towards eccentrics wanting to build rockets, though I’m guessing a lot of them are more boring and just buying huge boats/mansions and wait staff etc, and then investing the rest in letting family and friends get by without working.
They compare top 500 CEOs (S&P 500) vs average worker. How about comparing apples to apples? What's the compensation of an average CEO from some random small company?
Also total compensation is misleading measure, it's not money on the table. Often just stock options that may or may not vest in future.
Fortunately unachievable in US in the near future.
Apparently, we were significantly more socialist in the mid-1960s.
JFC the mental gymnastics never cease to amaze.
I would even point out that only deeply disturbed individuals can hate people they know nothing about (well, nothing other than what was shoved down their throats by propaganda channels)
"In 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that the median pay for executives at 300 of the biggest U.S. companies reached $13.7 million, up from $12.8 million in 2019. The highest paid CEO out of companies on the S&P 500 in 2020 was Paycom CEO Chad Richison. For companies not on the S&P 500 list, Palantir CEO Alexander Carp and DoorDash CEO Tony Xu earned the most in 2020, with pay packages of $1.1 billion and $1 billion respectively." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_compensation_in_the_...)
There are around 160,000,000 workers in the US. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the...)
If the workers became CEOs, paid like the median of the 300, that would be $2.2E15 (note exponential notation). The US GDP is something like $2.1E13. So, no, workers cannot become CEOs.
Executive compensation has grown significantly faster than wages, corporate profits, the stock market, and the economy for at least three decades. (Up something like 18% annually since 1978.) (https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-14-i...)
>Remember kids: if you study hard, get good grades, go to a good college, get a job, work hard, never take a sick day, live within your means and do what you're told ... then one day your boss might go to space
It would be nice if we could use some of the unimaginable wealth of these CEOs to improve society, but enough people still believe in the myth of Horatio Alger that we choose not to tax billionaires because we somehow think it will discourage people from becoming billionaires.