The historic UAW strike puts an exclamation point on more than a decade of efforts by Washington lawmakers to narrow the pay gap between top executives and workers.
And between 1978 and 2021, executive compensation at large American companies increased by more than 1,400 percent, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said.
This is really the problem. No one can convince me that being a CEO is 1400% more difficult now.
Motherfuckers had to put “left-leaning” in there, like math takes political sides.
Have to make sure you let people know that liberals are all socialists and hate capitalism
Presentation of that math does. I’d wager you could take one or two off years in that trend and say “look! No increase. Y’all are worried about nothing.”
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Believe me, I’m extremely fuckin’ aware. The guy above me said math isn’t political. And that’s true. But the presentation of the results is, however. The “left leaning” specification helps show who’s presenting the data, as opposed to a right, corporate, or other spin on the presentation.
Companies, hell whole industries, regularly misrepresent data to make a point and further that gap, or otherwise increase profits, etc.
Had the shower-thought today: there are not enough reports of CEO suicides. Like, I assume the thing they’ll tell you about their job is that it’s hard to handle the stress of holding so many people’s livelihoods in your hands. But I don’t ever see CEOs getting fired for too many layoffs, and when they do get fired it kinda doesn’t matter because they’re so rich it doesn’t matter much. If it were true that it’s a difficult thing to handle, in any way that at all relates to the working class struggle, you think it’d have a high suicide rate. But it doesn’t…
"I don’t want to hear whining from these companies that they can’t afford to pay workers what they’re worth,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Senator Brown is the last thing I have to be proud of as an Ohioan. And he’s retiring, almost certainly to be replaced by a Republican.
Ngl, I read that he was the thing you were “least” (not “last”) proud of and I was gonna say, there’s a lot worse from Ohio lol
“The argument that firms would make is that the job of a CEO has gotten exponentially more difficult in terms of responsibilities, litigation risks and outside pressure,” Dambra added. “Stock-based compensation allows for an alignment of interests between shareholders and managers. These are market (i.e. competitive) prices, and CEOs that are underpaid relative to their peers would leave.”
This is actual relevant information from this article, and a spotlight shone on why CEO pay actually needs a cap.
The pay difference between a CEO and manufacturing laborer is irrelevant to any discussion about CEO pay. The externalities of poaching CEOs from underfunded competitors can and should be seen as anti-competitive practice.
Taking the CEOs entire paycheck and distributing it to workers gets the workers pennies, each. Worker pay and CEO pay are not linked at all.
Taking the CEOs entire paycheck and distributing it to workers gets the workers pennies, each. Worker pay and CEO pay are not linked at all.
This is mathematically true (ish) but it misses the point. Super-rich people don’t spend their money, they use it to outbid other rich people for control of existing assets, control media platforms, and schmooze politicians. So your rent and bills go up while your pay goes down.
You need much more than simple arithmetic to describe this problem.
By that logic, every front line worker should’ve received a 1400% increase during COVID.
GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has vowed to “gut” the system for H-1B temporary worker visas if he wins the White House.
It’s the very system he’s used in the past to hire high-skilled foreign workers for the pharma company that built much of his wealth.
From 2018 through 2023, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved 29 applications for Ramaswamy’s former company, Roivant Sciences, to hire employees under H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to employ foreign workers in tech and other specialized jobs.
Yet, the H-1B system is “bad for everyone involved,” Ramaswamy told POLITICO.
“The lottery system needs to be replaced by actual meritocratic admission. It’s a form of indentured servitude that only accrues to the benefit of the company that sponsored an H-1B immigrant. I’ll gut it,” he said in a statement, adding that the U.S. needs to eliminate chain-based migration.
“The people who come as family members are not the meritocratic immigrants who make skills-based contributions to this country.”
Ramaswamy stepped down as chief executive officer of Roivant in February 2021, but remained the chair of the company’s board of directors until February this year when he announced his presidential campaign. As of March 31, the company and its subsidiaries had 904 full-time employees, including 825 in the U.S., according to its SEC filings.
When asked about the mismatch in the GOP presidential hopeful’s policy stance and his past business practices, press secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the role of a policymaker “is to do what’s right for a country overall: the system is broken and needs to be fixed.”
“Vivek believes that regulations overseeing the U.S. energy sector are badly broken, but he still uses water and electricity,” she said in a statement. “This is the same.”
Ramaswamy, who is himself the child of immigrants, has captured headlines for his restrictionist immigration policy agenda.
While not new to the GOP playbook, his rhetoric has at times gone farther than the other candidates, as he calls for lottery-based visas, such as the H-1B worker visas, to be replaced with “meritocratic” admission. He’s also said he’d use military force to secure the border, and that he would deport U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.
H-1B visas are highly sought after, and the demand for these workers continues to increase: For fiscal year 2021, U.S. businesses submitted 780,884 applications for just 85,000 available slots, jumping by more than 60 percent.
Ramaswamy acknowledged his own experience with immigration during his opening remarks at the first GOP debate in Milwaukee.
“My parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago,” he said. “I have gone on to found multi billion-dollar companies.”
Ramaswamy’s stance on H-1B visas is reminiscent of the 2016 Trump campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump, who has also hired a number of foreign workers under H-1B visas for his businesses, took a hardline stance on these foreign workers before later softening his rhetoric.
As president, Trump temporarily suspended new work visas and blocked hundreds of thousands of foreign workers from U.S. employment, as part of his sweeping effort to limit the number of immigrants coming into the United States.
10:1 wage ratio should be the law. Less if possible.
Money makes money
Thats your enemy if anyone wants to address income inequality
We need to look back to the New Deal to see how everyone can be uplifted. 90% marginal tax rates. Claw back our share of the prize for forty years of productivity gains without being paid our fair share.
Fuck the bankers and the monopolies and most especially fuck the hedges funds. Fuck ever-accelerating growth. Growth and investment are part of a successful system, but money isn’t god and the wealthy aren’t saints to be admired. Smash the oligarchs.
Of course that’s the enemy of anyone trying to address income inequality. What’s your point?
No ones really going after it. Anyone calling for stocks/corporations to be banned? Banks, landlords, publishers, basically anyone whose only “service” to society is having money.
A congresswoman is putting legislation forward to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act which would greatly impact the stock market. It would ban stock buybacks, limit what and how large financial institutions could invest in and plenty of other stuff that is proven to help keep the economy stable.
Plenty of people want ground-up reform, or total abolition of, corporations and stock markets. Look left of the US democratic party and you’ll find more than you could ever care to read on economics and markets. Same goes for banks, landlords, and publishers. You’re describing (in a very vague and roundabout way) socialism.
Michael Hudson calls it out fairly regularly.
