CEO Salaries Surge while American workers struggle

[mraynrand]

The bottom line is the growing gap between CEO salaries and entry level worker salaries is hurting the American economy.

Another non-sequitur. Entry level worker salaries are not the same as wages. You continually mix together wages (hourly pay) and salaries, yet you don't include compensation. Without addressing them all together, they are meaningless. Ford autoworkers were being paid $27/hour a few years back, but Ford was going into the toilet. Why? because total wages and compensation were $72/hour. Huge pensions (investment income coming from .....) and premium low copay insurance plans together were jacking Ford way over the approximately $50/hour Toyota was paying (and Toyota was feeling the pressure to reduce outlays as well).

As far as minimum wages, they were increased artificially by the 2006 congress - you know, increased minimum wage. The result was an increase in unemployment this spring - specifically among new graduates from high school and college. Why, you ask, why did companies stop hiring young, completely inexperienced people? The answer is that, like EVERY TIME in the past (including the institution of the minimum wage in the first time - a racist ploy to keep blacks out of work) - businesses forced to pay more for unskilled workers will hire fewer and make their current staff compensate. Thus, it takes longer for new grads and kids just getting old enough to work to find a job - increasing unemployment.

As you contend, if CEO salaries are crippling workers so that they can no longer purchase products, companies with huge CEO compensations will be the first to fold up (of course, that means all those workers will be out jobs, but no worries, by then BHO will have created new, lucrative, safe, government jobs they can take that won't be touched even if technology improves and efficiencies in production make their jobs obsolete). Free health care, guaranteed retirement, 30 hour work week, and a boss who gets paid the exact same await them in their nice government jobs. perhaps they can put the same nut on the same bolt on the same assembly line for the rest of their lives. That's America!

[mraynrand]

The bottom line is the growing gap between CEO salaries and entry level worker salaries is hurting the American economy.

A thought experiment: Assuming you're correct, just what do you imagine the CEOs are doing with all that extra money they are 'taking' from their workers' salaries? Try following the money and see what you find.

[The Leaper]

The bottom line is the growing gap between CEO salaries and entry level worker salaries is hurting the American economy.

The salaries of all CEOs combined is barely a blip on the radar in terms of the size of our economy as a whole.

Our dependence on foreign oil, love of free trade, and lack of fiscal restraint in Washington is what is killing our economy, not CEO salaries.

[the_idle_threat]

Everybody gets it, except poor OPF.

Like several others have pointed out already, CEO pay can be considered excessive when the pay is not comensurate with performance. But the simple fact that CEOs are paid millions does not hurt the middle class.

Raising the minimum wage (as pointed out above) hurts the middle class. Rising oil prices (resulting from our refusal to build refineries or drill domestically) hurt the middle class. Rising food prices (because we're burning our food in this ethanol boondoggle) hurt the middle class. Rising property taxes (resulting in part from kleptocratic local governments funneling tax dollars into overly-lavish benefits) hurt the middle class.

There may be a "war" on the middle class in this country, OPF, but you're on the wrong side.

[Zool]

The bottom line is the growing gap between CEO salaries and entry level worker salaries is hurting the American economy.

A thought experiment: Assuming you're correct, just what do you imagine the CEOs are doing with all that extra money they are 'taking' from their workers' salaries? Try following the money and see what you find.

Paying lower middle class to do their yard work for them while shipping manufacturing to 3rd world countries to save the corp money, thus making the stock worth more and saving the corp. more money and getting a larger yearly bonus?

Is that the right answer?

[mraynrand]

Everybody gets it, except poor OPF.

and Zool. Zool, think investment and purchasing. Yachts, helicopters, mansions, palaces, etc. all need someone to build them. And yes, yard services are companies too. I ran one when I was in high school. Made enough to pay for college. Imagine that. Geezus - envy is a real bitch isn't it?

[Zool]

Well i've watched 4 factories from my town move to foreign countries. You asked that the CEO's were doing with their money. I could give a shit less how much they make. Its not like a new thing. 2% of the population make 90% of the income. Pretty much been that way since money was invented.

[Little Whiskey]

can someone tell me who the middle class is? how much do they make? how about the rich? how much does a "rich" person earn?

[Gunakor]

can someone tell me who the middle class is? how much do they make? how about the rich? how much does a "rich" person earn?

From wikipedia:

Dennis Gilbert of Hamilton College has proposed a system, adapted by other sociologists, with six social classes: an upper, or capitalist, class consisting of the wealthy and powerful (1%), an upper middle class consisting of highly educated professionals (15%), a middle class consisting of semiprofessionals and craftsmen (33%), a working class consisting of clerical and blue-collar workers who conduct highly routinized tasks (33%), and two lower classes—the working poor (13%) and a largely unemployed underclass (12%).

Wealth is highly concentrated: The richest 10% of the adult population possesses 69.8% of the country's household wealth, the second-highest share of any democratic developed nation. The top 1% possesses 33.4% of net wealth, including more than half of the total value in publicly traded stocks.

According to the Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2006 was $48,201. The two-year average ranged from $66,752 in New Jersey to $34,343 in Mississippi. Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, these income levels are similar to those found in other postindustrial nations. Depending on the method of analysis, 12.3% or 13.3% of Americans were below the federally designated poverty line. The number of poor Americans, at least 36.5 million, was actually 3.5 million more than in 2001, the bottom year of the most recent U.S. recession.

[Little Whiskey]

so anyone who makes more than 50k per year is upper class? where is the division between lower and middle?

[Freak Out]

so anyone who makes more than 50k per year is upper class?

[The Leaper]

so anyone who makes more than 50k per year is upper class? where is the division between lower and middle?

It depends on where you are located...there can be wide variety between locations. 50k is probably solidly in the upper class in Mississippi...but 50k probably is lower middle class in some urban areas of the country.

I would break down the general percentages as such:

top 1% (elite class)
next 14% (upper class)
next 20% (upper middle class)
next 30% (middle class)
next 25% (working lower class)
next 10% (lower class)