Plus, the “tribe” of CEOs really does feel entitled, and like a kind of royalty who are better than you and I [I am assuming most readers here are not CEOs] Anyone who works full time [more than 35 hours a week] should be able to support themselves with what they earn. No CEO should earn more than 50 times what their average worker earns. Back in 1950 that was the norm. Today many CEOs are paid 2000 times what their workers earn, and the average CEO at least 200+ what their workers earn. As long as this is the case “things” will not improve. Plus, not everyone will thrive in a “knowledge economy” – some folks are better working with their hands, because we humans come in different models. See https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/
For life to get better for the vast majority of Americans – and citizens anywhere – those who work full time must be able to support themselves or receive social services to make up the difference. Health insurance should be treated as a normal governmental function that everyone receives, infrastructure investment should be in the governments top ten, not wars of colonialization. What is spent on endless war in a day would fix up the nation’s schools.
https://www.glassdoor.com/research/ceo-pay-ratio/
n/t
Don’t we? So let’s say that our next president is able to wave a magic wand and conjure up a “good paying job” for all the people at Walmart, CVS, Chipolte, Target and UPS. All those people leave Walmart, CVS, Chipolte, and UPS….then what? We close down Walmart, CVS, Chipolte and UPS?
It’s not “Better Paying Jobs”, it’s better pay for the jobs we already have.
Higher pay is justified when ones labor adds value to the product or service in question. I’d love to hear the justification of some of these CEO salaries on that basis.
… and, therefore, a more precise animosity, I will point out that study in question compares the mean of CEO salaries for one year (which is, in the article, called the ‘average’) with the median of the ‘workers’ pay, over some five years (and adjusted for inflation to 2014 dollars). Both the mean and the median are types of an ‘average,’ the mean being the sum of the values divided by the number of values and the median being the ‘mid’ point of the range. The ratio in question, from each company, is then derived from these derived numbers. Another ratio, it appears, is derived as the mean of the ratios of the companies ratios and is compared to the median of the workers salaries. It is NOT, necessarily, an apples to oranges comparisons, but the two groups have different standard deviations meaning that derivations could be entirely different from just one value difference. For instance, a CEO could get a raise, or a company could lay off a significant portion of its workforce and the numbers would change radically.
All this is to say that there is a great elasticity here and one or two numbers difference could change the overall ratios (for good or ill) and so care should be taken. The article notes both the difficulty in doing these sorts of calculations and the upcoming revision to SEC rules requiring companies to report their respective ratios (go Dodd-Frank!) so there is hope that as more precise information is forthcoming focus and clarity will be as well.
The article quoted cites the top five companies with grossest ratios as Discovery Communications (ratio of CEO pay to median worker 1,951), Chipotle (ratio 1,522), CVS Health (1,192), Walmart (1,133) and Target (938). Of those five I would only loosely consider Discovery Communications and CVS Health as part of the ‘knowledge economy.’ Last time I ate at a nearby Chipotle they used their hands a lot…