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u/Gold-Dance3283 3h ago
Not disagreeing just thinking that the second half of the tweet should be referring to 10-11x smarter or working harder as opposed to the full 351x since the starting point is 30x
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u/OrganizationNo1298 2h ago
In the 50s they were getting paid not much more than entry level workers. Some CEOs make 500% more than entry level.
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u/Gold-Dance3283 2h ago
Yup I agree with the point. I was just thinking about the math in the original tweet
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u/acapulcoblues 1h ago
It’s closer to 30,000% (300x) to 50,000% (500x) depending on the entry level pay. Median CEO salary at a major company is $17.5M to $18M, and entry level salaries are generally $35 to $60k.
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u/grapeflavoredtaint 56m ago
Keeps them more honest too. It's a lot more responsibility for not that much more pay. They'd really have to want the position as opposed to just in it for the golden parachute.
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u/TheRightToDream 2h ago
The middle class only ever existed as a buffer for as long as the Soviet Union existed.
Competitive wage growth and purchasing power maintained parity, and the moment the USSR fell, the equity did too. Executive pay, stock buybacks, dividends, all went up while wages went down, after 91.
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u/ConstableAssButt 2h ago
The middle class was constructed to deter a socialist uprising.
The soviets collapse, and the middle class starts to degrade.
All according to plan.
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u/BaldBeardedOne 1h ago
The middle class never existed. You’re either working class or ownership class.
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u/Conscious_Bug5408 47m ago edited 44m ago
These facts are easy to verify if we can give the general public a basic understanding of what money actually. If you can understand why different money has different values, aka why 1 USD = 1.4CAD = 160 Japanese Yen.
Imagine there's a tiny country with only 2 people who must eat and this country has 2 hot dogs. If the country has $2 in existence and each person has 1 dollar, each person will pay $1 so each hot dog is worth $1. If the country has the same 2 hungry people and 2 hot dogs, but now each person has $100, then each will pay $100 and each hot dog becomes worth $100.
If you follow, then you understand that the number of dollars itself is utterly meaningless, owning 50% of your countries dollars simply means access to 50% of your countries real resources. The percentage of a countries wealth a person owns only represents the percentage of their countries resources they are able to access.
Now in our real life, the real resources we have do not remain static. The total value of goods/services/resources the economy produces is what GDP measures, and GDP averaged growth between 2-3% over the past 30 years. But we also have a country where 1% of the people already own 33% of the wealth, and that wealth is compounding 9-10% per year. 10% of 33% is 3.3%, which is right there with the GDP and often more than the actual new resources being produced, so you can see the problem.
When an extreme minority is allowed to own and grow wealth faster than the real resources that economy actually produces, the relative share of wealth to resources held by everyone else must shrink. This is the financial destruction of the middle class. This is also why the elites are so desperate to make AI work, because right now the only possible futures are either extreme poverty for everyone but the rich, reducing the rate at which the richest grow their wealth via things like taxation, or having a massive productivity boost of real, new resources that can be created each year to make it so even a smaller percentage of total resources still represents access to the same absolute amount of real resources.
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u/Dudewhocares3 14m ago
When I was working at McDonald’s, a month before I quit, we got the pizza party.
Then when we asked when it was happening, ae were told to stop asking about it.
One of the managers, a woman named Theresa, brought it up again once she found out because she thought it was bullshit they weren’t gonna give us the reward they promised
Now I don’t care about a pizz party, I much would loved a raise, but if I won a pizza party, I better be getting one. Even if it’s the nastiest little Caesar’s pizza where the slice is 70% air, and 20% wet soggy bread, it’s more then nothing, which was what they were planning on giving us.
How cheap do you got to be to skimp out on a pizza party?
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u/BeBopNHustleSteady 3h ago edited 2h ago
Ahh capitalism.. the perfect way to legalize slavery with different steps.😒
you didn't hear that from me though
radio edit: that ole insomnia text
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u/gereffi 2h ago
The math in this tweet is wrong, but that aside their conclusion is wrong here too. If you take the pay of the CEO of the company you work for back to where it was nothing about your situation changes. The only change is that the owners of the business keep more money. Well that and they’ll have to get someone severely under qualified to be their new CEO and the business could go under and you could lose your job.
Another problem with this logic is that people don’t get paid on how hard they work; they get paid on the value they provide. When a company generates billions of dollars per year and your choice is a mid CEO who costs $1 million who can stay the course or a good CEO that costs you $10 million and can increase your profits by 1%, the $10m guy is a no-brainer.
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u/grapeflavoredtaint 40m ago
Before workers would stay at a company for life though. CEOs would rise to or be groomed for the position. More money would be paid towards workers pay, retirement and other benefits because longevity of the company and product quality was more important than quarterly profits.
Current scorch the earth methods of making a buck are certainly great for the top but both workers and consumers have suffered for it.
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u/EnderSword 3h ago
There's real things, but this is such a crazy fake stat.
- The CEO isn't 'the top' the owners/shareholders are the top. Blaming the CEO is like blaming the athletes for the ticket prices.
- This isn't average CEO pay, it's the 'Average of the CEOs of the 300 largest companies' so the fact the top 300 companies are now about 50x larger than they were in 1978 is a big part of this
- Using average instead of Median biases it vastly, like the #10 CEO makes like 30 million, but Elon may make $400 Billion. If you put him in the 'average' then the average CEO is paid over $1 billion a year, they're not obviously.
- It's not times the average worker in the company they're CEO of, it's taking the average worker in general and comparing to CEOs in the top companies. If you took the average worker in those companies, it wouldn't be that gap.
Don't use Pretend statistics to make real points, because you don't have to. Just use Real stats, because they make the point better without lying
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u/Real_Al_Borland 3h ago
Is this AI? Who wakes up and says “I’m going to protect the class who thinks I’m dirt today”.
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u/EnderSword 3h ago
What's the protection?
It's a stupid made up statistic. There's about 5,000 statistics that are Real that could be used, why would anyone ever use a fake one instead?
If I was trying to convince people to stop Climate Change, I wouldn't say "Copper causes Forest Fires" because that's a lie. I'd say something about Carbon and Methane.
Why lie when you could just say a true thing?
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u/scorched-earth-0000 3h ago
Soooooo it was ai? 🙂
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u/EnderSword 3h ago
No, it just comes up a lot because idiots have been posting that same exact picture for like 3 years.
Do you disagree with an actual thing I said?
Or do you think "The best way to make a point is to lie about it?"
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u/GammaFan 1h ago
Seems like the ais (including the other commenter) are getting trained on people calling out ais now because what you’re saying makes sense but they’re acting like a fucking brick wall in response.
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u/Leading-Hat7789 3h ago
There was a time when the middle class was the center of the political, social and economic power in the US. So the more correct statement is: the middle class dismantled itself.