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The trouble is most Americans wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living. CEO’s meanwhile are cleaning up with their golden parachutes and staggering salaries.
Immediate gratification like food, medications, and shelter?
Just stop. I don't know what alternate universe you're thinking of, but those 40% could have $400 (or more) in the bank if they stopped overspending. If they were so poor that they couldn't afford food, medicines, shelter, the left has already demanded that we all pay for those things for them. And remember, the left likes to point out how many of them have jobs.
If they have jobs, they can save $400.
I wonder how many of those 40% have Netflix accounts.
The trouble is most Americans wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living. CEO’s meanwhile are cleaning up with their golden parachutes and staggering salaries.
I'm not seeing it... The average American CEO salary is $189,600/year.
This reminds me of an excellent book I'm reading, called The Five. It's a well researched book about the five women who were killed by Jack the Ripper, or whose deaths were attributed to Jack the Ripper anyway.
Yes, the women were desperately poor, and life for anyone, but ESPECIALLY a single woman, in the slums of Victorian London, was terrible. Workers rights? Haha. Workplace safety? Non existent. Labor laws? Also non existent. Womens rights? Don't even get me started. Divorce laws? Insane.
Anyway, in spite of all that, one thing that sticks out to me over and over again, and which the author touches on several times, is that these women ALL could have avoided being killed if they hadn't spent a chunk of their money on substances and substance abuse - typically alcohol in those days. I mean, she doesn't belabor that point but in most of the cases, maybe all of them (I'm only on case #4 right now), the women would work (in terrible conditions) but they would spend money that they could spend on rent, on alcohol instead. I mean, in every instance, each woman had earned, during the previous 24 hours, enough money to get her off the street, but they spent it on other things (NOT food or clothing or shelter), typically alcohol in their cases.
This doesn't mean that they were just stupid. But it does mean that for whatever reasons, they saw more value in drinking, to the point of getting stumbling drunk (they had all typically been arrested for public drunkenness and vagrancy before their murders and were all stumbling through the slums of London, drunk, well after midnight) than in having a roof over their heads. Most of them were truly homeless, but if they had chosen to spend a few shillings on "the doss house" (where they could rent a bed for the night) rather than on alcohol, they wouldn't have been a target for the murderer.
This book, which chronicles their lives, also shows that they had other options at various times throughout their lives, which if they had made better choices would have probably gotten them at least off the streets and out of abject poverty.
None of them probably would have ever been higher class wise than working class but that beats the heck out of being homeless in London's Victorian slums.
Exactly - we had our first at 20 years old. Our second 2 years later. I (so called head of household) worked for 40 years or so (or at least earned for that), but my best years were from 38 yo or so on.
But that's fodder for another thread. I don't buy into the "we have to have 100's of thousands before we have children" routine. Some do, some don't.
Yep. Had our first when I was 23 and second at 25... They're now 19 and almost 17. Should have an empty nest within 5 years; I'll be 47 at that time. I'll still have approximately 20 years to work before retirement (there are a lot of assumptions in that statement, but I'm going to just go with what is average/expected).
Immediate gratification like food, medications, and shelter?
No, immediate gratification like buying Iphones, meals in upscale restaurants, manicures, pedicures, and purebred pets when they don't have $400 in savings.
Uh, nice try.
I was CEO of many companies...and never made much.
The only real question is if you are purposely trying to fool others or are fooled yourself?
The pay you quote clearly says 2.6 MILLION CEO's (and growing) is the sample used.
Please look at the charts of income distribution. Whether I am called a "CEO" or not is meaningless. I may be only the "President" or the Chairman of the Board. But however you slice it, the bottom 50% of the country has been doing worse and worse and worse and there is nothing on the horizon which indicates that will change much.
I'd agree that it can't get much worse....that much I can say. You have to keep the peasants from rebellion so they just borrow money from our kids and grand kids to give themselves more...that way, people don't notice.
"In 1965, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio in the United States stood at about 20-to-1"
"The average CEO-to-worker pay ratio for the 168 companies included in this report stands at about about 70-to-1, with some CEOs making more than 300 times the median salary of their employees – just in cash (base pay, bonuses, profit sharing, etc.). Many CEOs receive substantial stock/option grants and perks as part of their compensation, which can more than quadruple their total annual pay"
Here is something we can perhaps agree upon...to some level. It's not the high pay of a few that is (percentage wise) responsible directly for all our ills. It's more the result of ills than the cause of them. It's one indicator that the world is topsy turvy.
The former CEO of the same (fraud charged) firm that Rick Scott has been rewarded by.....retired with a value in stock and retirement of about 800 Million to 1 Billion. That's in addition to what he made while And he was there. I'm sure there are many similar stories.
So, where does that money come from? Simple - it's why regular people have to pay our "double the cost" health care fees. It's skimmed money made from suffering people
Long ago they did some studies and found that top executives worked just as hard and long for a median total compensation of somewhere in the 2 million dollar range. This was at top tier companies that may now make Billionaires out of some of their execs.
Do you really think a Facebook or Google engineer works harder for a Billion than they would work for 500K? I don't.
AND, I'm even OK with them getting that Billion...they aren't taking it from our health care. As long as they pay their taxes on it I'm fine since the income is from advertising which is really not putting anyone out (not like talking food or medical care or housing away from people).
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