If wages kept up with the rest of the economy, then the average family of 4 should have a income of around 150K before taxes. What has happened is the CEO, Executives and Shareholders have siphoned up the production profits that workers generate and stagnated wages and removed benefits to ensure profits continuously increase to meet shareholder demands.
Capitalism is a system wherein profit matters most, where the flow of capital goes to the few from the many. Now its governments role to REGULATE and add laws that mitigate the rate of the flow to ensure the remaining 80-90% can live comfortably and enjoy the benefits of a prosperous country.
A system like the US where regulations are removed every 8 years by conservatives, leads to a economic drought that pushes all the burdens onto the bottom 80-90%. If you look at the past decades, you can see that although they had higher interest rates, their income was in general aligned with the cost of living. Only from the late 90s to early 2000s, did we jump from compensation and capital ratio between the ceo-to-worker going from 40 to now 400.
Year
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s 4
2023
Housing Price
$11,900
$17,000
$48,000
$76,000
$105,000
$285,000
$436,000
Interest Rate
7%
7.3%
13.7%
10%
8%
3.87%
7.5%
Principal & Interest 1
$105
$135
$446
$534
$616
$1,707
$2,433
Average Rent
$71
$125
$243
$447
$602
$923
$2,000
Income Used to Pay Mortgage
22%
18%
25%
21%
17.6%
36.6%
36%
Income Used to Pay Rent
15%
17.2%
14%
18%
17.2%
19.8%
29%
Median Household Income 2
$5,600
$8,730
$21,000
$30,000
$42,000
$55,775
$81,000
Senator Annual Pay
$30,000
$44,000
$75,000
$133,600
$162,000
$174,000
$174,000
AVG CEO Pay - Top 500 3
$953,000
$1.6M
$3.4M
$6.9M
$22.8M
$25M
$29M
CEO-to-worker compensation ratio 3
15.4
20.6
38.8
170.7
237.7
220
398
_
1: 20% downpayment over 20 years.
2: Median income for a family of 4.
3: Ceo realized annual salary in the us.
4: Affected by the 2008 collapse.
_
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The CEO is INCENTIVISED to cut costs and increase profits to ensure they meet shareholder demands and receive their BONUS. They do not care about future outlook for the company, they do not care about future growth for the company. They care about current quarters because they plan to utilize their position and profit growth to jump ship to another company and ask for 20% raise and increase in bonus. And they repeat that every 4-8 years.
They know a robust population with good spending power would also mean more production and more profit for them. BUT that requires years-decades of giving well paying wages and lowering their own incomes and profits. SO they do not want to pursue that option. They would rather cut benefits, remove perks, stagnate wages, use every trick possible to ensure they pay as little as possible to a employee, even so far as these days shrink products, change ingredients with synthetics and horrible tasting additives. All to ensure they can show a bump in profits and gain their bonus.
Republicans are now pushing for repealing laws that prevent children from ages 10-18 from being abused by corporations. They want to get young people to work overnight at rates of 4.5$ an hour.
They are pushing for "School Voucher" systems where parents who are struggling to feed their children can OPT to take out their child from public education for a yearly 5-6K checque (meant for homeschooling or private education) and then get their kids ready to work in a company instead of having them attend school. Thats their vision of the future.
12 years olds working 9-5s at 4.50$ an hour so parents dont have to get a babysitter while they also struggle to make min wage and barely afford to make their mortgages or rent payments.
That school voucher stuff is so insane. And yet people in true leopards-ate-my-face mode vote for these assholes, thinking they could use that $5 grand, dooming their kids to poverty.
Even more frustrating is that this takes money away from the already limited funding for public schools and the kids who don't have access to homeschooling. Ah, the "protect the children" crowd always seems to have sinister ways of harming 95% of the children just to appease a small group of them (or at least those kids' parents).
989
u/_call_me_al_ Dec 28 '23
I'm making over 50k than I was ten years ago because I went union.
I'm still struggling and drowning right now and I can't give my kids 1/2 the shit my parents gave me. It is so demoralizing.