5 ms·
One thing that article doesn't touch on, if we returned ceo pay to 1978 average of 30:1, how much of a raise would that give each employee?
by Veelox 8y ago
One thing that article doesn't touch on, if we returned ceo pay to 1978 average of 30:1, how much of a raise would that give each employee?
- airstrike 8y agoIn 1978, China wasn't what it is now. Wages for workers has stagnated in the US but not abroad. Or do you propose returning Chinese workers' wages to 1978 levels in order to afford restoring American wages?
- jlawson 8y agoNot necessary. The economy isn't a zero-sum game. There is more wealth to go around now than in 1978.
- M_Bakhtiari 8y ago> Not necessary. The economy isn't a zero-sum game. There is more wealth to go around now than in 1978. True, but it's been increasingly overvalued since the middle ages with the liberalisation of compound interest. That particular activity is zero sum and will concentrate wealth in one end until real wealth generation (farming, mining and refining of the results of the former two) becomes infeasible. Right now it's Venezuela, my bet is South Africa being next. Europe in our lifetime.
- airstrike 8y agoAfter reading your comment twice, I think you're somehow blaming the shitstorm that the Chavez / Maduro governments brought upon their own country on the liberalization of compound interest, but I can't fathom how you'd conclude that, so I'd love for you to correct my understanding of your comment.
- jacobolus 8y agoPretty sure if you reduced executive pay to being no more than 30:1 where the 1 is a typical Chinese unskilled labor salary, the executives would be even less happy about it.
- telchar 8y agoThat has nothing to do with the parent's question. Rising Chinese salaries don't cause executives to need more compensation than the did in the 70's relative to their (American) workers. If your point is that high American worker salaries aren't supportable now due to competition, you would have to explain why American executives' salaries are increased compared to the 70's.
- airstrike 8y agoMy point is that both executives and workers benefited from globalization, advances in telecommunications and transportation. Unfortunately to American workers, it turns out that the workers who enjoyed the upside were some of the poorest in the world and not the very expensive American workers of the mid-1900s. Fortunately to American executives, they started the race ahead of everyone else and with their multinationals corporations captured most of the upside from globalization.
- ummonk 8y agoAlmost none. If you split the CEO pay across all the mass of workers, it won’t come out to much.
- kamaal 8y agoOn the same lines, if you take little from each worker and give it to the CEO, its worth a lot to one individual.
- dingaling 8y agoIn absolute terms perhaps. But $20 per week extra would be significant in relative terms to many workers.
- Scriptor 8y agoExactly, small increments of money like that can mean all the difference. It can be enough to stop worrying about paying the power bill, to buy enough healthy food for dinner, or to save up more easily to get the car fixed.
- Marazan 8y agoWhat if you raised the workers' wage rather than reducing the CEO pay?
- ummonk 8y agoIf it's a high margin business (e.g. Apple), that will help the workers a lot, while depressing shareholder returns. If it's a low margin business, it will go bankrupt. Note that in the past several years, shareholders have experienced massive returns due to rising corporate profits, largely because corporations have held workers' wages stagnant throughout the economic recovery/boom.
- kartan 8y ago> If you split the CEO pay across all the mass of workers, it won’t come out to much. I agree that if you split the CEO pay it does not affect so much the employees. I just wanted to highlight is that the CEO does NOT want the employees in the board as they may see the CEO's salary as unfair. So, to protect his own salary, the CEO keeps employees out of the structures of power. Then we can argue if is that lack of power the one that keeps or not workers salaries low. But workers are not represented becuase is against the CEO best interest so her own salary can grow unchecked.