Since recent events, every post like this seems to me like a most-wanted list.
This isn’t a useful metric as it’s obviously bad for retail and service industries, and good for tech simply because of their business models. The median wages are really high when you outsource most of your labor and your actual “employees” are a handful of high level engineers. Spectrum for insurance is scummy but you can’t just hire people in China to do service calls or upkeep infrastructure, ya know?
Also it doesn’t include ownership. 1:1 with AirBnb is misleading for instance as it’s probably mostly their execs on the team and their compensation is in stake at the company. Their business model also counts everyone as contractors, so there’s that too.
Don’t suppose you have more pixels for this image?
Never mind, my Lemmy app is being weird.
Alphabet 29:1? Is this Google or is there also some other company called Alphabet?
Yes but note the median pay is 300k. Most of the high ratios are retail and most of the low ratios are tech because of labor pay, not CEO. That said, Alphabet must be specific to an exec branch because there’s no way the median is 300k counting all the outsourced labor they likely rely on (like to make Pixel phones).
I doubt they actually make the phones - don’t they outsource it?
Plus Alphabet includes Boston Dynamics and other weird things they probably definitely shouldn’t be doing.
The ratio between lowest paid and highest paid employee, in all forms of payment and benefits, to all employees (including contractors), should be capped. I’m thinking a ratio somewhere around 1:5 or so.
Have an employee paid only 20k per year? Congrats on your 100k salary Mr. CEO.
Agreed. Btw it is “paid”. “Payed” is a different word entirely. English is weird.
to all employees (including contractors)
Might aswell just make it a multiple of the minimum wage, because somewhere in the chain there will always be someone scrubbing toilets earning next to nothing. Or you end up incentivizing complex structures that try to avoid this cap somehow.
That said i don’t think this is the right solution anyways, since it only targets income and not wealth. As long as profit gets made it has to end up somewhere. And i feel like it is much more likely to end up in the owners pockets, than resulting in higher wages. It’s similar to how the salaries of successful actors/athletes are obscene, but the alternative would be that the studio/club just makes more profit.
So the more important issue would be to improve mechanisms that redistribute money, from whereever large amounts of wealth accumulate. Like a wealth tax or higher inheritance taxes (or just closing all loopholes that help avoid/reduce it).
However i would definitely also support a higher maximum taxation rate for the super high earners.
Or you end up incentivizing complex structures that try to avoid this cap somehow.
They already do that with hiring employees as contractors, which is why I mentioned it. Any employee they hire gets counted.
That said i don’t think this is the right solution anyways, since it only targets income and not wealth.
Hence why I said payment in any form. That includes benefits, PTO, stocks, everything. The rich still have other shenanigans they pull, sure. But this would at least solve the problem on a salary level.
And i feel like it is much more likely to end up in the owners pockets, than resulting in higher wages.
Agreed, which is why the stock market needs to end. It’s the primary means by which they rob the working class.
So the more important issue would be to improve mechanisms that redistribute money, from whereever large amounts of wealth accumulate. Like a wealth tax or higher inheritance taxes (or just closing all loopholes that help avoid/reduce it).
I’d recommend looking into a land value tax system.
The government could incentivize this by a tax formula. Highest paid employee divided by lowest paid employee sets the payroll tax rate for the whole business.
They could, but a lot of idiot children decided not to support the party that would have done that because unnamed randos on the interwebs told them not to. So that’s not going to happen. Again.
Not sure exactly which country you’re referring to, but in the USA the Democratic Party absolutely would not do that, which is precisely why they lost. If they had accepted the popularity of Bernie Sanders in 2016, maybe. But the party decided not to go that direction.
Their next presidential nominee is probably Gavin Newsom, who grew up in private school and best friends with Oil money billionaires - the Getty family.
I think 5 is maybe an over-ambitious goal.
I don’t really mind a 50:1 cap, or even a 100:1 cap. I can understand how experienced leadership of a large scale multinational corporation should be compensated more than 5x the amount of a 16 year old part time cashier in a town of 2200 people.
Even think about it from an age demographic/experience point of view. How much more should someone make doing the same job for 40 years than the new hire with no experience? In a lot of fields, I don’t feel like it would be unfair for that scale to go 4:1. Now factor that into the consideration of the varying different positions, the ratio has got to be higher.
And in the face of abhorrent 2100:1 ratios, I think a 100:1 ratio is low enough to make a meaningful difference and high enough that no one can sensibly argue against it.
I think 5 is maybe an over-ambitious goal.
Maybe, but I’m OK with being ambitious.
I can understand how experienced leadership of a large scale multinational corporation should be compensated more than 5x the amount of a 16 year old part time cashier in a town of 2200 people.
I can’t. Large scale multination corporations shouldn’t exist. But that’s a separate issue ultimately.
How much more should someone make doing the same job for 40 years than the new hire with no experience? In a lot of fields, I don’t feel like it would be unfair for that scale to go 4:1.
A company hiring somebody with 40 years of experience should be paying towards the higher end of the 1:5 ratio. It would ensure far more of the wealth goes to those who actually provide value.
This has to include part time workers. There is no way the median salary of ROSS is only 8k.
Yea, even at the bare minimum federal wage of 7.25 that’s still like 13k/Yr
They wouldn’t have those employees be full time because then they would need to pay benefits.
Very true. As a ridiculously underpaid former general manager of a popular pizza place, I can confirm. After the ACA passed I was instructed by my masters to hire more people and give them no more than 25 hours a week. Top performers were given 32 hours a week because we needed to call them in when shit got crazy and they would get close to 40. Nobody gets overtime ever. I worked 50-70 plus all the work I did from home like scheduling and product orders, plus being on call constantly for questions or coverage. All for 36k a year, the federal salary minimum to not get paid overtime.
Luckily we didn’t have to stick to the 25 hours thing because turnover was already nuts and nobody but the truly desperate will deal with that.
Speaking of desperation, my wife was in physical therapy school, I walked to work and we had a truly shithole apartment with roaches and bedbugs. I didn’t know I could do better due to untreated mental illness and other things. These bitch motherfuckers want everyone to have the mentality I did.
I rant about this a lot.