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You are saying that all or even a little more than all of the growth went to the rich people. Okay. But you also wrote: > The basic argument I have is that t
by graycat 11y ago
You are saying that all or even a little
more than all of the growth went
to the rich people. Okay.
But you also wrote:
> The basic argument I have is that they are not sharing adequately (i.e., sustainably) in the rewards for their labor.
Let's see: Suppose a company has 100,000
near minimum wage employees and the
CEO got $50 million last year. So,
for some arithmetic
50 * 10**6 / 100,000 = 500
So, distributing the CEO's salary among
all the low level workers would
give each worker only about $500
more a year, that is, about the
same as working one week. Wouldn't
even start to put the worker in
the middle class.
Might argue that if the CEO does
his/her job well, then the company
will grow, hire another 50,000,
currently nearly unemployed,
low wage workers and promote some of the
present 100,000 workers to management
positions where they start to get into
the middle class.
Net, to get the poor people into the
middle class will take more money
than the CEOs get, and one of the
best approaches is to have more and
better CEOs who create more and better
jobs. One example may be the
large company (?) that recently
announced that all its employees,
many at the low level,
can go to college for free.
Again, it appears that the key to
getting the poor people into the
middle class is not rich people
but powerful people, yes, maybe
powerful because they are rich;
but to be successful they need
to use their power, and smarts,
and not just their money --
because even the rich people
do not have even 1% of the needed money.
Power? Maybe. Money? No.
- cgearhart 11y agoYou're looking at the wrong pot of money. Dividing up executive wages among the lowest paid workers has never been considered a reasonable proposal for solving inadequate wages for workers; a more reasonable proposal involves including worker compensation in the distribution of profits from the business. While the CEO might "only" make 50 million, the organization would be expected to make much more. Let's take Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) as an example because, conveniently, their CEO made ~$50M in 2013. [1] Their annual earnings report indicates that they had a net income of $1.04B that year, and their corporate profile suggests they have ~60,000 employees. [2][3] If they spent 100% of their current profits on employee salaries it would yield ~$17k/employee. (For reference, the full-time minimum wage salary in 2013 was $15,080. [4]) Even under much more reasonable conditions -- let's say that we allocate 1/4 of net income to worker salaries -- then each of their 60,000 workers would earn an additional $3800, which is just about equal to the max EITC for a family with one child in 2013. [5] It's really not about CEOs getting paid huge amounts, it's that workers are neither represented nor included in sharing the prosperity of their labor -- and taxpayers are subsidizing the difference. [1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/04/bed-bath--beyond-ceos-2013-comp-worth-50-million/9977663/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/04/bed-... [2] http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/bbby/financials http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/bbby/financials [3] https://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=BBBY+Profile https://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=BBBY+Profile [4] http://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-workers-poverty-anymore-raising/ http://www.epi.org/publication/minimum-wage-workers-poverty-... [5] http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/2013-EITC-Income-Limits,-Maximum-Credit--Amounts-and-Tax-Law-Changes http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/2013-EITC-Income-Limits,-Maxi...
- graycat 11y agoGood point. For your > You're looking at the wrong pot of money. I was responding to the common claim that the worker bees are poor because the suits get too much money. Your example would be really something for Apple Computer with, what is it, $195 billion in cash?