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Someone a lot smarter than me once said "The poor are always with us."
This is very true but we reduced them by tens of millions in the 1960's and early 1970's - and, in fact, even today when the number increased there are still fewer % wise than before the War on Poverty.
I’ve got more than that in my wallet. And, it’s been there for weeks. Point being, a LOT of people spend as soon as they get it. Everyone should be required to show their toy box before they get any sympathy.
No, immediate gratification like buying Iphones, meals in upscale restaurants, manicures, pedicures, and purebred pets when they don't have $400 in savings.
The trouble is most Americans wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living.
Who is stupid enough to think they should?
The Laws of Economics say they should not, will not and cannot.
Cost-of-Living is a function of Cost-push Inflation, which you control, and Demand-pull Inflation, which you also control.
Monetary Inflation, which is virtually non-existent in your economy, is not a function of Cost-of-Living.
Why? Because when Monetary Inflation exists, wages rise and wages rise because the price of everything, as in every thing as in every single thing that exists in the United States rises and wages are nothing more than the price of labor.
Cost-push Inflation is all you, brother.
You elect the people who enact the taxes, and who enact the laws, ordinances, rules and regulations that increase the cost of doing business, and those costs are passed onto you the consumer, and then you vote on property taxes and other levies for taxes on other things.
A classic example of Cost-push Inflation is day-care in Ohio, which used to cost about $3,500/year but now costs $9,800/year thanks to the State legislators.
The State legislature, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that day-care workers must have a minimum of a 1-year certificate in early childhood education by an accredited university.
That reduced the supply of day-care workers by 90% overnight.
Since wages are a function of Supply & Demand, the Demand for day-care workers remained constant while the Supply was dramatically decreased. The result was higher wages, which increase the cost of day-care operation and those costs were passed onto the people using day-care.
In the case of Demand-pull Inflation, your insistence on consuming everything like plague of locusts has increased Demand for goods, services and resources while the Supply of goods, services and resources has remained static.
Increasing wages to offset price increases only causes prices to rise higher and faster.
That's a game that cannot be won in this Universe.
If you can no longer afford something, then stop consuming, or seek substitutes or move to increase the Supply.
However, where housing is concerned, if an area is saturated, it is impossible to increase Supply, so nothing can be done. If people cannot afford to buy/rent there, that's sad really, but that's just the way it is. They'll have to seek housing elsewhere.
Same with education. If you cannot afford to go to the college you falsely believe you're entitled to attend, then you'll have to seek substitutes by going to less expensive universities.
I'm not seeing it... The average American CEO salary is $189,600/year.
Actually, it's $236,020/year.
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Originally Posted by craigiri
The only real question is if you are purposely trying to fool others or are fooled yourself?
No, the data is accurate and comes from your own government, not Oxfam.
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Originally Posted by craigiri
The pay you quote clearly says 2.6 MILLION CEO's (and growing) is the sample used.
That's clearly a statistically representative sample which excludes self-employed CEOs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
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.
Non-sequitur and not supported by evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigiri
"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...
That's a classic example of NAZI-style propaganda that would make even Herr Josef Göbbels proud.
There are ~880,000 publicly-traded corporations.
168 is 0.019% of the publicly-traded corporations and is 0.00112% of all publicly-traded and private companies that have 25 or more employees.
Your insistence on cherry-picking the highest paid CEOs is nothing short of disingenuous propaganda.
Furthermore, it is deceitful, deceptive and disingenuous to include total CEO compensation rather than only CEO cash compensation.
Federal law requires total CEO compensation, meaning cash and non-cash compensation to be reported to share-holders of a company.
So, yes, the Blue Cross/Anthem CEO had a total compensation of $23 Million, but only $7 Million was cash, as in a wage/salary, while the other $16 Million was non-cash benefits.
A loan officer at a local bank who is a friend of mind told me you would be surprised to know how many people borrow money with out anything in savings. They'er getting; farm home and car loans with out even $1000.00 in savings. A realtor told me once he sold a home to a couple who earned $70,000 per year and he swore they didn't have $1.00 in savings. It might be that people are disparaged at the amount of money left after paying all their bills and just spend it on entertainment. I guess the new normal is to have great credit and good earning potential.
You can always scale back and live on soc.sec. and 401K in retirement. Some of my older siblings and friends who are retired say they are getting $400-500. more per month than they did while they were working.
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.
It has always been predicted that the future in the USA would be better and better for each generation as a whole - they would work less and recreate, leisure, etc. more.
That was the curve for a long time - say from about when Henry Ford offered double wages ($5 a day) to about the mid-1960's. Sure, the Depression had put some crimps in it, but the whole idea was that all Americans would share in the increased productivity, better infrastructure and industrial booms.
A famous 1952 article on what life in 2000 would be - and this was agreed upon (in general) but most who studied the matter:
"ECONOMICS: New Living Standards
The nation's industrial and agricultural plant will be able to support 300 million persons 50 years from now - twice the present population. Land now unproductive will be made to yield. Science will steadily increase crop production per acre. Technological, industrial and economic advances will give the American people living standards eight times as high as now."
I would venture to say that we are not 800% above the first Levittown standards.
"Technical advances will be well distributed throughout the economy"
Hmmmm..........
They really did get many things right in the prediction - population, life span, air travel, medicine, women working mens jobs, etc.
And here you go:
"LABOR: A Short Work Week
There is every reason to believe that the steady growth of organized labor in the first half of 1950 will continue along the same trend in the second half of the century. So tell your children not to be surprised if the year 2000 finds 35 or even a 20-hour work week fixed by law"
As a futurist myself, you can see why I am shocked by "get a second job" as compared to what the leading economists, futurists and other predicted if we stayed on the same curve.
Now, get back to work. Time is a -wasting
you're using a 1952 article that pondered what life in the year 2000 might be like?
that shorter work week dream was if labor unions got stronger and stronger and managed to have LAWS passed.
My PTSD and depression is the biggest challenge in my success specifically my PTSD I'm sure. I also have tendonitis so that keeps me from manual labor..although I'm not trying to go into manual labor I've just considered it because I know it pays a lot.
It's not a condition because that implies it's a disease but it is difficult for me to advance in this society when I am neuorodivergent.
I struggled with this question because it's difficult for me to rate so I would say a few of my greatest strengths are integrity, being unbiased and having a great attention to detail. Coming up with the weaknesses was surprisingly more difficult for someone as self critical as me. I think it is because they all tie into one big one when I really think about it. I have poor spatial reasoning, "search for words" when speaking verbally at times and a bad short term memory. Well actually I'm not sure how the spatial reasoning connects but something tells me it does too. This has to do with thinking deeply. All these thoughts come at me at once and filtering can be difficult for me especially in the moment. I know this isn't always a bad thing because it's good to see all sides of things..it's what helps me be as I say unbiased and having a great attention to detail. I just have a hard time harnessing it so it doesn't cause my short term memory to be so bad, be a better verbal speaker and maybe reason better spatially. This is also probably where my neurodivergence comes in. If I could just harness this it would really help me to stand out in a good way. Also the PTSD might be making it worse. I am not sure about all of it but considering the fact that my short term memory was better before my PTSD then it's probably a factor.
On paper they're a horrible fit but I mean retail is pretty much all you can get that isn't supposed to require experience so I look for work at home jobs/data entry sort of jobs but I can't even find any that I can apply to. There was a recruiter that told me my data entry needs work. I can type words but random letters and numbers take me longer to be accurate with and practice does not seem to make perfect here. I think I'd be better for those kinds of jobs too (if it wasn't for the speed of random keys) but I know I can work at certain retail stores at least for a while and those stores are far better for me than what I do now. My current job has too much downtime in the sense that it doesn't stimulate me intellectually so it's the worst retail position for me because all I do is focus on how much I'm socially drained. If it's something that interests me..say computers/electronics I don't have to think about my social battery so much. Obama is an introvert. I'm sure I'm more introverted than him but I know it's going to be better for me than what I'm doing now. I suppose those other retail stores have a harder time wanting to hire me because of my verbal speaking (I don't know because again they usually don't tell me) I can see how that would be an issue but interviews are more likely to trip up my verbal speech because I'm all on my own so my searching for words tend to come out more when I'm nervous. I don't think it would be a problem on the job because a) they train you b) I do tend to rehearse conversations so I could probably do that with customer inquiries. Of course I can't always predict what they are going to ask but I would have a good idea c) interviews are more about me because again it comes out more when I'm nervous and it probably doesn't have to be perfect if I was talking to a customer..it just has to have enough coherence.
I hope I filtered well here. My thoughts feel disorganized.
honestly, this makes almost no sense. So let's start with - where's the PTSD come from?
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