Just to be clear: if Bill's initial worth is exactly the same as Bob's at the start ($10 each), and Bob pays Bill $0.50 annually, over 55 years Bill's pay increases annually over Bob's from negligible to 22x.
I know the freeper line is, if that’s what they want, that’s ok, they’re running things.
It's basic economics. When person A pays person B even a little bit annually, and their wealth grows by the same percentage annually, B will make more than A each year - over time, a LOT more.
Economic fact: the rich get richer. Doesn't mean the poor get poorer, just that the gap grows ever wider. (Remember: today's "poor" have food, heat, AC, cable, etc; our "poverty line" is 20x the world median income.)
“Economic fact: the rich get richer. Doesn’t mean the poor get poorer, just that the gap grows ever wider. (Remember: today’s “poor” have food, heat, AC, cable, etc; our “poverty line” is 20x the world median income.)”
And since it’s an “economic fact” it’s how things should be? Executive pay is a hot button issue. It’s not tied to performance, and in public companies, it’s not controlled by the shareholders as it should be. The relationship of the board to the executive staff is incestuous.
In a private company, I don’t care if the CEO is paid 1000000 times what a worker is paid. Don’t care, doesn’t matter, doesn’t affect me.
In public companies, some form of control or restraint should be employed. First, I seriously doubt there are more than a handful of CEOs that deserve the compensation they make. Second, how can it be equitable when the rate of compensation is decided by a small close knit group, and decidedly not tied to performance.
The average American doesn’t pay attention to much, but they do see the corporate disasters with executive staff floating away from the wreckage on golden parachutes. I’ve been told many, many times here, that those people earned it, and deserve it. I don’t believe that, and the average American doesn’t believe it. The status quo, executives with ever increasing pay gaps with their staff, will net you an electorate that is fed up and pretty ok with a socialist.
It’s what we have now. This wasn’t hard to see coming.