German CEO pay/worker 12:1 And US CEO pay 472:1

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Edumakated

That doesn't excuse any info in the tread.

It does because the chart is a statistic about nothing made to rile up people who are envious of others....

Unless you get behind the numbers and how they are calculated, you can't really say that the stat is useful or insightful. For example, how do they figure the "lowest paid worker"... doesn't this change based on industry? So if the US has more industries like retail with hundreds of thousands of lower paid workers compared to say a european bank that may not have so many lower paid workers, is it really apples to apples?

At the same time, the CEO/worker pay ratio used to be more like Europe back during the golden era of US economics and worker standard of living. This is all interrelated with neo liberal trickle down economics and deregulation.

originally posted by: SocratesJohnson
couple of things

1) some of this would be due to the service industry being a tip based industry. I never met a bar tender/waiter/so on that ever claimed all, if any, of their tips. So that would screw a lot of the data

2) Take the CEO salary then divide it by the number of stores they are over seeing. I mean if you are the CEO and your company has 5,000 and you are making 10 million, you are making $2,000 per store per year, or about $38.50 per week, about $1 per day from every store you are over seeing.

I know it's more fun to rant about the evils of capitalism then trying to really figure out the number.....

You have to take all of this in context. The income of the most wealthy has grown substantially since the late 70's, while the real wages of middle and lower class, and even lower upper class, have remained stagnant since then. This is despite large gains in gdp/capita. Basically, all of that is going only the top, including CEOs.

a reply to: DerBeobachter

I agree. And people who think this wealth inequality is great are sticking their head in the sand. History is ripe with examples of what you are feeling. That rubber band will snap back. Perhaps riots or a nice profitable war.

But people are fed to the backteeth, you can feel it, the people are angry, being used as hard working low wage slaves. Unions betrayed the german workers over the last decades, were sleeping with the companies, the employers. But that seems to change now, at least a bit. There are strikes again now. On wednesday there begin 24hour strikes of the metal workers(that are member of the IGM union).

I swear i can smell the riots and see suits and ties hanging on trees, if nothing changes the next months. We have to copy everything that comes from the overseas, but i guess we don´t let it go so far like in the "U"S oligarchy, people will go postal before! I am even just waiting for a new RAF(Red Army Fraction), would be just the consequences of that greedy behaviour of the rich and lazy suits and ties.

It is not only the CEO where the imbalance is. There are a lot of people making huge salaries that do very little to get those huge salaries, while the regular workers get a tenth of what they get.

There is no reason why an architect should get ten times the pay of a person who is building a skyscraper. There is no reason while top brass in a company should get ten times the pay of the workers, while doing way less work. I can see a good manager getting maybe one and a half times the pay of a middle pay worker without a lot of time at the company, but not triple the pay. I can't see a teacher who worked twenty years getting sixty grand plus in wages a year while the starting teachers barely get a living wage. Our whole system is amuck. There should not be that much inequity in wages for longlivity, yes, a person who has worked at a job for many years should get more, their experience is greater, but not double of what someone with two years experience gets.

It is not just the execs vs common worker that has gone amuck. A person working a job at microsoft should not get way more than a person working at a smaller company basically doing the same thing. If anything, the person at the smaller company probably works harder.

originally posted by: Quetzalcoatl14

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Edumakated

That doesn't excuse any info in the tread.

It does because the chart is a statistic about nothing made to rile up people who are envious of others....

Unless you get behind the numbers and how they are calculated, you can't really say that the stat is useful or insightful. For example, how do they figure the "lowest paid worker"... doesn't this change based on industry? So if the US has more industries like retail with hundreds of thousands of lower paid workers compared to say a european bank that may not have so many lower paid workers, is it really apples to apples?

At the same time, the CEO/worker pay ratio used to be more like Europe back during the golden era of US economics and worker standard of living. This is all interrelated with neo liberal trickle down economics and deregulation.

CEOs were also running much smaller companies and there was a lot less labor competition globally. CEO pay has shot up with the move to pay tied to stock performance while a lot of the regular joe work pay has stagnated because of competition from global labor sources. In other words, CEOs today have a much bigger job than in the past while the average worker is now competing against lower costs labor globally. Remember, there was really only one market post WWII and it was the US... most of Europe was destroyed. So wages and competition reflected this fact.

You also have to remember that Fortune 500 CEOs represent the largest companies... There are literally hundreds of thousands of companies. Of course, the guys running the largest companies are going to get paid a ton of money. Wal-Mart brings in $500 billion a year in revenue and has like 2.5 million employees. the CEO making $30 million is appropriate for the level of responsibility. Anyway, the shareholders decide what they want to pay....

Don't worry, that 470:1 ratio will start trickling down any moment now.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: Quetzalcoatl14

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Edumakated

That doesn't excuse any info in the tread.

It does because the chart is a statistic about nothing made to rile up people who are envious of others....

Unless you get behind the numbers and how they are calculated, you can't really say that the stat is useful or insightful. For example, how do they figure the "lowest paid worker"... doesn't this change based on industry? So if the US has more industries like retail with hundreds of thousands of lower paid workers compared to say a european bank that may not have so many lower paid workers, is it really apples to apples?

At the same time, the CEO/worker pay ratio used to be more like Europe back during the golden era of US economics and worker standard of living. This is all interrelated with neo liberal trickle down economics and deregulation.

CEOs were also running much smaller companies and there was a lot less labor competition globally. CEO pay has shot up with the move to pay tied to stock performance while a lot of the regular joe work pay has stagnated because of competition from global labor sources. In other words, CEOs today have a much bigger job than in the past while the average worker is now competing against lower costs labor globally. Remember, there was really only one market post WWII and it was the US... most of Europe was destroyed. So wages and competition reflected this fact.

You also have to remember that Fortune 500 CEOs represent the largest companies... There are literally hundreds of thousands of companies. Of course, the guys running the largest companies are going to get paid a ton of money. Wal-Mart brings in $500 billion a year in revenue and has like 2.5 million employees. the CEO making $30 million is appropriate for the level of responsibility. Anyway, the shareholders decide what they want to pay....

So American CEO's have to be paid more to compete globally, so why don't other nations CEO's have ratios of 400+:1 since, they too, are competing in a global market?

If we are in a global market, and American companies and CEO's have to outsource to other nations, what does that say about America's place in the global market?

Who benefits?

originally posted by: rickymouse
It is not only the CEO where the imbalance is. There are a lot of people making huge salaries that do very little to get those huge salaries, while the regular workers get a tenth of what they get.

There is no reason why an architect should get ten times the pay of a person who is building a skyscraper. There is no reason while top brass in a company should get ten times the pay of the workers, while doing way less work. I can see a good manager getting maybe one and a half times the pay of a middle pay worker without a lot of time at the company, but not triple the pay. I can't see a teacher who worked twenty years getting sixty grand plus in wages a year while the starting teachers barely get a living wage. Our whole system is amuck. There should not be that much inequity in wages for longlivity, yes, a person who has worked at a job for many years should get more, their experience is greater, but not double of what someone with two years experience gets.

It is not just the execs vs common worker that has gone amuck. A person working a job at microsoft should not get way more than a person working at a smaller company basically doing the same thing. If anything, the person at the smaller company probably works harder.

Salaries are determined by supply and demand of the worker's skill set, nothing more. In addition, some jobs pay more because they are tied directly to revenue and profit. This is why the highest paid employees in most companies are in sales oriented positions where cost center positions tend to pay the least. One position brings in money, while the other position costs money.

If you want to make a lot of money you have to do something that people are willing to pay for and second, it needs to be in a field where there aren't a lot of people who can do it well.

Again, if you read my previous posts, other nation's CEOs generally are not running companies of the same size. US CEOs on average run the largest and most successful global companies, so they naturally get paid the most on average.

a reply to: Edumakated

Oops, don't forget about illegal immigration and the effect it has on wages.

Oops, H-1B visa also have an effect in those "skilled" areas of employment.
Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers With Immigrants
www.nytimes.com... A239F0DF46CF54A7110A&gwt=pay

Then there is the suddle collusion between employers when they takes surveys of each other on pay then set pay to match (each other).


..

a reply to: Edumakated

Again, if you read my previous posts, other nation's CEOs generally are not running companies of the same size. US CEOs on average run the largest and most successful global companies, so they naturally get paid the most on average.

So the CEO's are more productive being in charge of more?

a reply to: Edumakated

So earning several million dollars a year for doing "a job" is ok? I have no problem with remuneration but 40 hours a week or less for being nothing more than playing the figurehead is nothing less than obscene.

ETA The Netherlands. Shell, Unilever and some bank or other. Money money!


ETA2 I forgot Philips and Heineken!

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
a reply to: Edumakated

So earning several million dollars a year for doing "a job" is ok? I have no problem with remuneration but 40 hours a week or less for being nothing more than playing the figurehead is nothing less than obscene.

No one who makes a lot of money works 40 hours a week. Most CEOs or any executive... heck almost anyone making six figures works like 60-80 hour weeks. 40 hours a week is for people who want below average pay. First year investment bankers work like 90 - 100 weeks. Same for lawyers at major law firms. ALL THE TIME. Most people complaining couldn't make it two weeks.

Is earning several million a year for playing a sport "ok"? What about several million a year for being an best selling author? How about several million a year for reading a teleprompter on TV? How about several million a year for playing records on the radio? We can play this game all day... why is making several million a year as a CEO egregious but not other fields?

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Edumakated

Again, if you read my previous posts, other nation's CEOs generally are not running companies of the same size. US CEOs on average run the largest and most successful global companies, so they naturally get paid the most on average.

So the CEO's are more productive being in charge of more?

More responsibility equals more pay....

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Edumakated

Again, if you read my previous posts, other nation's CEOs generally are not running companies of the same size. US CEOs on average run the largest and most successful global companies, so they naturally get paid the most on average.

So the CEO's are more productive being in charge of more?

More responsibility equals more pay....

I don't see that in every day blue collar workers lives. What I do see is more work being done by less people for the same pay.
Productivity goes up and pay is stagnant.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Edumakated

Oops, don't forget about illegal immigration and the effect it has on wages.

Oops, H-1B visa also have an effect in those "skilled" areas of employment.
Lawsuits Claim Disney Colluded to Replace U.S. Workers With Immigrants
www.nytimes.com... A239F0DF46CF54A7110A&gwt=pay

Then there is the suddle collusion between employers when they takes surveys of each other on pay then set pay to match (each other).


..

Yes, all those things do come into play which is why lower level employees have seen wages stagnate. No disagreement.

The only thing I'd concede is that because CEO is so often tied to shareholder value, the CEOs job is to import H1-Bs, etc which affects lower level employees. Shareholders want the most bang for the buck and the CEO is making decisions within that context.

a reply to: Edumakated

Agreed.

The only thing that a corporation is to do is to created value for the shareholders. That is it, and it is very often at the determent of everything else. This is called externalizing costs. This is why Walmart depends on SNAP for many it's employees to eat. This means a subsidy to a multi bilion dollar corp, and the CEO gets rewarded for this too.


..

a reply to: Edumakated

Logical fallacies. Thanks for playing. Good luck!

originally posted by: LightSpeedDriver
a reply to: Edumakated

Logical fallacies. Thanks for playing. Good luck!

Nope, just pointing out the hypocrisy. If it is wrong for a CEO to make millions of dollars, then it must also be wrong for others too as well if you are going to be consistent with your position. If not, explain why....

The reality is that no one brings up actors and athletes and others who make just as much if not more than CEOs because those other people are often virtue signaling SJW causes whereas CEOs stereotyped as some faceless, greedy entity firing workers for fun while having a three martini lunch.

A CEO who worked at a company for 20 years, working 80 hours a week and may be in their late 50s/60s while being responsible for managing an enterprise making tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of employees doesn't deserve $20 million. On the other hand, an ditzy actor making a film is worth $20 million because they hashtag MeToo at the Oscars. Got it...

a reply to: seasonal

Study hard and become a CEO, then.