“average top CEO compensation was $15.6 million in 2021, up 9.8% since 2020. In 2021, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 399-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 366-to-1 in 2020 and a big increase from 20-to-1 in 1965 and 59-to-1 in 1989”

  • SCB@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Cutting CEO pay would not affect worker pay that much.

    Fortune 500 CEOs make, on average, about 17MM a year. The average Fortune 500 company has 52k employees.

    If you split their entire paycheck among just the bottom 50% of employees you’re looking at like $3 per hour. That’s… okay. But now you don’t have a CEO, and this isn’t really sustainable with any sort of inflation.

    If you instead raise prices one cent on whatever product or service, you almost certainly will have more money to divvy up among employees, and it’s sustainable.

    Worth noting I’m for a federal cap on CEO pay but that’s more to address the runaway nature of the CEO market, and its downstream effects.

    • pthaloblue@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Giving everyone a $3/ hr pay bump from eating an overpaid CEO sounds like a pretty great start

      But now you don’t have a CEO

      Added bonus!

    • soundoftheunheard@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I think your decimal may be off. For full time work, looks like ~36 cents per hour, assuming full time. But, for many it would be even worse. For Walmart, completely eliminating the CEO pay could increase the bottom 50% earners annual income by a whopping $22.

      I agree with the overall sentiment tho. More than what this article shows, I’d be interested to see the percentage and dollar amount increase in disposable income among various cohorts within the top 10 percent incomes.