21 Comments

There was a time when Fortune 500 companies' CEOs and boards understood a fundamental fact: that a $ paid to a minimum wage worker had a very, very high multiplier effect, while a $ paid to a millionaire or billionaire had hardly any such effect at all. And when the latter did spend a penny out of a dollar, it probably went offshore to pay for vacations in the south of France or to buy imported luxury items. Knowing this central economic fact, these CEOs reined in their innate greed sufficiently that the US experienced economic prosperity at all income levels.

No more. The average captain of industry today is in a contest to see who can out do the others in rapacity. In unparalleled greed. In contempt for workers AND their customers. At the same time, chiseling as much tribute as possible from federal, state and local treasuries.

Hence the all time record high ratio of executive pay to workers pay.

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Only too true. Our vote for all-time champions of greed splits between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and, of course the stable genius, Donald J. Trump. But of course there are many others!

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Great idea - and not so utopian as some might think. The magic word: unionize! Make it possible for ALL workers to join strong, well-organized advocacy groups that already exist. Communism? Nope, there are no unions under communist regimes. Socialism - yes. It can coexist with democratic regimes and this "union" is amazingly successful. The American oligarchs live in fear of it.

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Ah if only Americans had any notion of what "socialism" actually means. Too often it is conflated with Communism, which used to be the worse insult available to the right-wing. Now the right seems to weigh in on the side of REAL communists, like Putin.

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Giving workers skin in the game is not only fair but has proven very constructive for companies - as when workers have an ownership stake. I hope your idea goes viral!

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W E L L L L L - where are politicians (especially reThuglicans) when it comes to looking out for 'THE PEOPLE - [AMTRAK one purrfekt example]. Pols took a cue from these utopian CEOs and witness how pols have expanded their personal portfolios, at the expense of THE PEOPLE! Regulatory laws, constitutional amendments, individual state requirements, local ordinances - where not prohibited by 'higher authority' [DeSatin comes to mind] - HAHADEDOODAHAHA!

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I suggest a similar approach in reverse: Every CEO's salary (or any other way of getting paid) should be no more than 50 times the salary/wages of the lowest-paid person in that company. Or maybe 49, or 48,...

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A truly revolutionary idea!YES!!!

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Jim, isn't it obvious? The "working stiffs" simply lack the sophistication to understand the highly complex math. They need bosses - just as women need trump - to protect them.

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That's it! Never mind the silliness of the women's movement slogan "...like a fish needs a bicycle." Or the obviously stupid assertions by inferiors like the old Wobblies (I.W.W.) that the means of production should be owned and run by workers at the local level.

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Jim - Your idea has, in a sense, been around for a long time. I retired decades ago, working, in part, for groups tied in with government. While they didn't issue their own stock. their retirement fund did depend on other stocks. My wife is about to retire from a medical device company. Her retirement plan depends, in part, on her company's stock. I must say that my wife, the company, and it's stock have all done very well.

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Hey, brother Jim, thanks for yet another wonderful idea!

Through sleight of that invisible hand (of the non-corporeal "Market") CEOs act as if they're entrepreneurs. They aren't--just very manipulative employees with elite connections. They exploit that abstraction known as money...but what exactly in the physical world do they produce? When there is nothing left to extract from human and natural resources, then what?

In contrast, we very real workers are the ones who make very real goods and provide very real services to actual customers. What we do is what in real life makes commerce and trade possible.

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One of my favorite films is 'Norma Rae', featuring Sally Field. Here's the Wiki summary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Rae

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Very simple and fair way to raise workers’ wages. Of course, if we go by percentages, the CEOs’ dollar amount raises still would dwarf the frontline workers’ raises.

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What might actually work is...set aside a pool of dollars, representing the total pay of the non-executive work force. Raise this pool every year by the same percentage that the executive pay goes up. Management would have some discretion as to how to distribute the money among the working stiffs, rather than the same percentage to everybody, but that number of dollars would go to raises.

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The ratio of CEO pay to worker's pay in this country is shameful. Some countries limit the percentage than CEOs can get. If that were true here, it might incentivize the boss to raise wages for those "below" him/her.

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Fairness, imagine that!!

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Good luck with that idea!

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I believe that executives should get some compensation for their decisions on running a business, but it shouldn’t exceed 3 times what the workers are paid

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