xkcd puts Money into perspective: https://www.xkcd.com/980/
Wow, I spent a lot of time looking at that. Just the personal expenditure alone is worth taking in.
Great stuff. A goldmine of info.
One group of stats really stood out for me:
1965 production worker average hourly wage $19.61
2007 production worker average hourly wage $19.71
Typical 1965 CEO pay for the same period $490.31
Typical 2007 CEO pay for the same period $5,419.97
I'm no anti-captitalist, but it's hardly a surprise that movements like the 99% are gaining traction when you see how much CEO pay has gone up in comparison to your average worker.
I am not really sure how the CEO pay levels are tolerated by investors, you'd think there would be a backlash from the stock-holders if not the employees.
Totally agree. The more I think about it the more preposterous it is that CEOs of today get paid 11 times what their 1960s counterparts did (in real terms) for doing exactly the same job. It just doesn't make sense from a business or a harmonious society point of view. Clearly the 99% have a point and perhaps the idea will spead from the usual anarchist crowd to the average Joe.
Where it's gotten totally out of whack is when they pull down these huge salaries and huge severance packages for driving a company into the ground.
One argument is that companies have to offer the golden parachute to get good talent to leave their current job, but a guy on the radio who just wrote an article on the subject for a major publication (I forget which), had examples of unemployed CEOs who had been fired from their previous companies, hired and given golden parachutes (why does an unemployed CEO need to be guaranteed a GP?). They reaped a second fortune when fired from the second company. He said that commonly the compensation committees are stacked with buddies who do the most foolish "analysis" to assign ridiculous salaries that ratchet up over time, which accounts for the rising CEO salary.
The workers don't have buddies making unreal and fantastical comparisons on their compensation committee. Quite the contrary, their wages are being compared to what it would cost to hire labor in China, Korea or Viet Nam. So that tends to ratchet their real wages down over time.
nice, quickest win here is the 22b found in a temple in India :D
How the world will split in the future
ceo, owners income will rise more
clever people who support the above people - will keep being well paid, but there wont be many of them
the rest - will have no rises as will be completely replaceable
Look at your own companies, the facts, etc
Doug