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> Were automakers significantly less profitable 40 years ago I'll go out on a limb and say that the disparity between how much money the few folks at the top o

> Were automakers significantly less profitable 40 years ago I'll go out on a limb and say that the disparity between how much money the few folks at the top of the auto industry made vs the average worker probably wasn't as wide. If workers have been forced into debt and yet still can't live as well as households used to with just one breadwinner, I'm not sure how much of that is due to a lack of will to fight and a willingness to accept debt. Certainly the weakening and undermining of unions and the worker's ability to fight effectively has had some impact. In any case, workers need to accept that they'll need to start fighting a lot harder in whatever ways they still can because clearly they won't be treated fairly otherwise.

voisin 3y ago
> I'll go out on a limb and say that the disparity between how much money the few folks at the top of the auto industry made vs the average worker probably wasn't as wide. This seems like a culture war red herring because it often translates to “CEOs shouldn’t be paid so much” which distracts from the fact that workers should be paid a lot more. The gap can be closed from either direction of course, but I rarely see the anger directed anywhere but “fat cat executives overpay themselves”. I could care less if a CEO makes $100m a year if the average employee was able to still give a good life to his family on one income!
- troupo 3y ago
  It's a sign of things going wrong. It seems bo one read the article. It talks about it. In the past 40 years: CEO wages in auto industry have gone from 20x the worker salary to 300x. CEO wages have increased ~1400% while worker wages have increased 18%. Etc.
  - voisin 3y ago
    I understand the stats. The issue though is that rather than closing the gap from the top (reducing executive pay), the answer is to close it from the bottom (increase worker pay as a percentage of revenues to historically normal levels, which I believe is the real issue here). If workers made enough to thrive, would anyone care if CEOs also made $100m? I wouldn’t.
- 6510 3y ago
  The 100 M builds influence. It keeps growing. The fundamental issue imho is that work is done first by getting your hands dirty and second by building machines to aid the hand work which requires dirty hands and more machines. Some planning, optimization and designing will have to be done but this should be of a temporal nature and is ideally done by people doing the grunt work. You can get away with not doing it like that but reality will slowly catch up. You need to plan the [proverbial] factory and optimize the process but the rewards (while starting big) gradually decline. Each new design will be better than the last but eventually it is good enough. There is more value in swapping parts and having experience with a fixed design. People in all positions are way to comfortable where they are and have way to little resources to just walk away, hop jobs or get fired. Simply living is way to expensive because of these same entitlements. It's quite the circular process.

voisin 3y ago

> I'll go out on a limb and say that the disparity between how much money the few folks at the top of the auto industry made vs the average worker probably wasn't as wide. This seems like a culture war red herring because it often translates to “CEOs shouldn’t be paid so much” which distracts from the fact that workers should be paid a lot more. The gap can be closed from either direction of course, but I rarely see the anger directed anywhere but “fat cat executives overpay themselves”. I could care less if a CEO makes $100m a year if the average employee was able to still give a good life to his family on one income!

troupo 3y ago
It's a sign of things going wrong. It seems bo one read the article. It talks about it. In the past 40 years: CEO wages in auto industry have gone from 20x the worker salary to 300x. CEO wages have increased ~1400% while worker wages have increased 18%. Etc.
- voisin 3y ago
  I understand the stats. The issue though is that rather than closing the gap from the top (reducing executive pay), the answer is to close it from the bottom (increase worker pay as a percentage of revenues to historically normal levels, which I believe is the real issue here). If workers made enough to thrive, would anyone care if CEOs also made $100m? I wouldn’t.
6510 3y ago
The 100 M builds influence. It keeps growing. The fundamental issue imho is that work is done first by getting your hands dirty and second by building machines to aid the hand work which requires dirty hands and more machines. Some planning, optimization and designing will have to be done but this should be of a temporal nature and is ideally done by people doing the grunt work. You can get away with not doing it like that but reality will slowly catch up. You need to plan the [proverbial] factory and optimize the process but the rewards (while starting big) gradually decline. Each new design will be better than the last but eventually it is good enough. There is more value in swapping parts and having experience with a fixed design. People in all positions are way to comfortable where they are and have way to little resources to just walk away, hop jobs or get fired. Simply living is way to expensive because of these same entitlements. It's quite the circular process.