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The evidence is in your favor where the CEO compensation just went up, up, up even as they used every justification in the world to pay workers less. The worker

The evidence is in your favor where the CEO compensation just went up, up, up even as they used every justification in the world to pay workers less. The workers whose actions generated the revenues. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/ https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-continues-to-rise/ In most companies I've worked, the CEO's mostly just made simple or random choices based on what data people under them were producing. The companies with established models could mostly run on autopilot. They have at times in between senior management or executives. There's also been little evidence their performance is tied to their pay much outside financial manipulations with many taking golden parachutes on way out of companies doing poorly. Add in the interlocking boards effect on compensation grants, you have every reason to believe the pay gap is an artificial construct by a privileged few to further enrich themselves at the expense of the many. These other explanations are either of little effect or smoke screens to keep people from attacking the root causes of what their doing. It's not like they hide it when talking among themselves that this is a system designed for the exclusive benefit of the rich as much as they can make it. See the leaked Citigroup memos about the plutonomy and such that they tried to take off the Internet. https://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/12/citigroup-plutonomy-memos-two-bombshell.html https://politicalgates.blogspot.com/2011/12/citigroup-pluton... Particularly relevant is what's in report No 3 here showing economic inequality wasn't natural but artificial by folks like their clients: https://rwer.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/the-plutonomy-reports/ https://rwer.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/the-plutonomy-reports/

jeffreyrogers 9y ago
It would be interesting to see how much CEO compensation has increased when you control for firm size. My guess is it's still increased but not as dramatically. Given growing firm size and industry consolidation it makes sense that CEOs would get paid more. There's fewer of them and their responsibilities are larger. I also disagree that CEOs are unskilled. Try putting a random Ivy League graduate in charge of Goldman Sachs. I don't think they would succeed. There's undoubtedly rising inequality, but I don't think there's a single cause, nor a simple solution.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  That would be interesting as I expect the gap to be with larger firms with more politics and administrative overhead in general. Far as skill, I'm not saying they're unskilled so much as not that much more skilled than managers or specialists that make tiny fractions of what they make. Goldman Sachs is so unusual I wouldn't use them for extrapolating general trends. They do hire tons of people much smarter than their CEO to do the work that leads to CEO's decisions but make way less. It fits my model as a data point. They do pay some of their clever employees small fortunes a lot more than some other companies, though. They also lobby Congress and infiltrate regulators which is how they negotiated the bailout. They're more scheming that most creating wage gaps. On a whole, nother level of creating problems. ;) Btw, been a long time. Hope you've been doing well, Jeffrey.
  - jeffreyrogers 9y ago
    Yep, I agree with those points. Thanks, I have been. I hope you have as well :)

jeffreyrogers 9y ago

It would be interesting to see how much CEO compensation has increased when you control for firm size. My guess is it's still increased but not as dramatically. Given growing firm size and industry consolidation it makes sense that CEOs would get paid more. There's fewer of them and their responsibilities are larger. I also disagree that CEOs are unskilled. Try putting a random Ivy League graduate in charge of Goldman Sachs. I don't think they would succeed. There's undoubtedly rising inequality, but I don't think there's a single cause, nor a simple solution.

nickpsecurity 9y ago
That would be interesting as I expect the gap to be with larger firms with more politics and administrative overhead in general. Far as skill, I'm not saying they're unskilled so much as not that much more skilled than managers or specialists that make tiny fractions of what they make. Goldman Sachs is so unusual I wouldn't use them for extrapolating general trends. They do hire tons of people much smarter than their CEO to do the work that leads to CEO's decisions but make way less. It fits my model as a data point. They do pay some of their clever employees small fortunes a lot more than some other companies, though. They also lobby Congress and infiltrate regulators which is how they negotiated the bailout. They're more scheming that most creating wage gaps. On a whole, nother level of creating problems. ;) Btw, been a long time. Hope you've been doing well, Jeffrey.
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  Yep, I agree with those points. Thanks, I have been. I hope you have as well :)