I'm talking about the US Government, not HIVE.
If we want a decent American life, fuck voting for the political corporate oligarchy. Those guys are earning 400 X the average paid employee. CEO's HAVE ALL THE CONTROL. They don't care who you vote for. They will do what they want, and you will too.
Corporate CEO income has increased TENFOLD in 30 years, while normal-person income has not even doubled. TOP CEOs earn 400x the average employee income today, versus 40 X what it used to be back in the 90s, while most people can't even pay rent on a single income.
I'm not against CEO income increasing, but not at the expense of the company, the customers, the employees, and the overall economy of the world...which seems to be the case at the moment.
Stocks is where ALLLLL the control is. Do you think our vote fucking matters? Stop voting. 80% of the American market is determined by the top 500 publicly traded American companies.
The uber wealthy don't pay taxes because most of their value is wrapped up in business assets, real estate assets, and stock assets. They don't pay CAPITAL GAINS because they roll old assets into new properties. They don't pay INCOME TAXES because they take small incomes, offset the positive cashflow against the negative mortgage or business investment, and take the rest in untaxable stock portfolios. They don't pay SALES TAX because they borrow against their stock portfolio to buy their homes, yachts, jets, trips, and bags.
Lower middle class are the ones left paying taxes. And what is left is not enough to even pay rent nowadays. We are the ones paying for our shitty roads, our shitty healthcare, our shitty schools, and our shitty police force. This is why it's all shit. Cuz WE bought it.
The sooner we can get our income wrapped up in real estate and stocks, the better we'll be. And then we can buy ourselves better things.
CEO income on the S&P 500 generally ranges between 200 X to 500 X the average paid employee. Not LOWEST paid employee. I said AVERAGE. In 2023, Costco's CEO, Craig Jelinek, earned $17M...336 times the median employee pay at Costco. This is up almost 30% from the year before, which was already 218 X more than the average paid employee.
Cost of living has spiked the US. I'm wondering, did the incomes for the average worker go up at Costco last year? Nope. It stayed the same...$20.20/hr.
98% of Jelinek's income is in stock awards. Why do you think that is? This is so he doesn't have to pay as many taxes when he borrows against these stocks to buy yachts and women.
You know I like charts. Just for fun, let's see a comparison from today to 2012. **
| Company | CEO 2024 | Median 2024 | CEO 2012 | Median 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Costco | $17M | $42K | $350K | $35K |
| Amazon | $30M | $30K | $1.5M | $25K |
| Apple | $63M | $57K | $4M | $30K |
| Walmart | $25M | $35K | $20M | $28K |
| Berkshire | $20M | $38K | $300K | $30K (guess) |
| Microsoft | $48M | $115K | $1M | $91K |
When the top performing companies responsible for dictating the economy of the entire world won't pay their full time employees enough to pay rent----it's not a good sign. Super top-heavy establishments like these, who have fed the fat to the top at such exponential growth, AT THE EXPENSE of the bottom, usually leads to toppling.
Mark my word. We'll topple. It's not sustainable when people can't eat.
**findings are the best information available I could scour on the interwebs using resources such as payscale.com, glassdoor.com, epi.org, EDD Labor Market Division, etc.
