In the 1950s, CEOs were paid 20x more than the average worker. (Bernie on Twitter)

[Uncle Joe]

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[brooklynite]

1. "We must put an end to this rampant greed and inequality."

And his solution is...what?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. How about tax policies to penalize excessive CEO pay?

[mikeysnot]

7. Start here...

https://www.bernietax.com/

He breaks up the current top tax rate of over 600,000 and adds several higher brackets over 600k.

No reason someone making that be in the same tax bracket with millionaires and billionaires.

[paleotn]

10. Simple, really....

Though nearly impossible in practice today. It's our tax system, starting with the Reagan tax reforms, that are driving much of the inequality. In the 50's thru 70's there was little incentive for the wealthy to make the gargantuan amounts earned income they do today, since the Feds would take most of the incremental increase in taxes on vastly higher rates in the upper brackets. Brackets that don't exist anymore.

Today, there's little incentive not to just take the money vs. leaving it in your business. One can make so much more by taking the earned income, paying the tax at much lower rates, and "investing" it in sub-prime CDO's and crypto currency! What's not to like? And with lower capital gains rates, why not just churn that investment cash on the newest "bright and shiny!"

Did I mention our tax system also favors financial bubbles? Bubbles created by those who should know better, but obviously don't.

Rewarding success and entrepreneurial risk taking is important. I get it and being a died in the wool capitalist, I agree with that. But I think we've gone too far in the other direction. Need to find a happy medium.

[inthewind21]

19. Stop

voting in the people over and over and over who fucked it all up to start with. That's the solution.

[brooklynite]

21. A Bernie has a strategy for that? If so, I haven't heard of one.

[mikeysnot]

22. Ummmmmmmmmmm

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17583911

[malaise]

2. He is 100% correct

Rec

[yardwork]

3. It's outrageous.

[ShazzieB]

5. "Today, CEOs are paid 399x more than the average worker."

[ProfessorGAC]

6. And, It Doesn't Need To Be That Way

I retired from a multi-billion dollar company and the CEO made 12x of what I made.
Now, I was above the overall average but maybe by 60%.
Yet the company was a Wall Street favorite due to stability & financal infrastructure. (Low D/E, high asset value, market dominance.)
So, we had a guy making 25-30 times the ENTRY level pay in a successful company.
That sure suggests a CEO at 399x the average in unjustified.

[IronLionZion]

8. We must pay job creators more because of the high prices of goods and services.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

9. More info...

https://www.pcmag.com/news/ceo-compensation-blows-away-average-workers-salary

[ ... ]
According to the data, the largest gap is in the Consumer Discretionary sector, which includes Amazon's retail operation, Nike, and McDonald's. On average, CEO pay in this sector was a honking 741 times higher than that of their average worker. Consumer Staples ranked next on the list, at a little over half of the gap in Consumer Discretionary, with CEOs making an average of 383 times more than their average employee. In case you're wondering, the Consumer Discretionary sector covers companies selling non-essential goods (like a huge swath of what Amazon hawks, sneakers, or Big Macs). Consumer Staples refers to daily necessities, which is the category in which the S&P analysts delegated Proctor & Gamble and Coca-Cola. Personally, I don't need a Coke every day, but maybe I'm weird.

Healthcare was also a CEO-to-median-employee pay-ratio offender, but it had the lowest number of the top five, with its CEOs raking in just 253 times as much as their average employee. And as for technology, Communications Services and Information Technology each made the top-five list with ratios of 334:1 and 315:1, respectively. But that doesn't quite let tech companies off the hook in terms of CEO wage sin.

Dublin headquartered, Aptiv Plc had the second-highest pay difference of any S&P 500 company, with its undoubtedly grinning CEO, Kevin Clark, pulling in $31,267,329 in 2020—5,294 times what his average worker made in the same year. Only Abercrombie & Fitch had a wider gap, with 6,565:1.
[ ... ]

[Uncle Joe]

12. Thanks for the addition Hermit_The-Prog

[Brother Buzz]

11. Ben & Jerry's once had a 5 to 1 rule limiting the pay of its CEO

Ben & Jerry's once, admirably, had a 5 to 1 rule limiting the pay of its CEO -- $81,000 -- to the company's lowest paid worker. It required the CEO to raise the pay of his employees to create a pay raise for himself. Ben & Jerry's abandoned that rule in 1994 when the company couldn't find anyone to replace Ben Cohen upon his retirement.

[70sEraVet]

13. So, what happened, in a span of just 70 years, that made CEOs something like 380x more valuable

than they were in the 50's? Were they all bitten by radioactive spiders, and thus gained superpowers?
Did they all receive sainthood status from some Corporate Pope?

[ret5hd]

15. Vampires...they were bitten by vampires.

They want to suck the lifeblood out of the world.

[leftstreet]

16. Kill unions, kill Communism, etc. They no longer fear us n/t

[Quanto Magnus]

14. Everything is expensive due to

executive compensation, not t regular employee raises...

[Initech]

17. Bezos, Musk, and Branson having more wealth than 1/2 the world combined should be a wake up call.

I really wonder why we haven't risen up against these scumbags. Oh wait, Fox News exists. Nevermind.

[brooklynite]

18. WEALTH is not SALARY...

None of these folks became billionaires because they were overpaid as CEOs.

[JudyM]

20. If they shared the wealth with employees or used part of it to bring jobs back from China/India

they would no longer be esteemed pillars of their communities.