Many Of Us Are Severely Underpaid & Here Is PROOF:

[kpete]

You're Severely Underpaid, And Here's Proof
The Huffington Post | By Jillian Berman



Ordinary Americans are paid too little considering the value of their labor, while CEOs are mostly overpaid, according to recent research. That's unlikely to change in 2014.

........................................

Here are four charts that show the difference between what is and what "should" be.
(All charts and calculations created by Bivens and his team at EPI for The Huffington Post).

1. Minimum wage workers are severely underpaid:

What the federal minimum wage would be in 2014 if it kept up with productivity: $18.30.
What it actually will be: $7.25.



..........................

2. Even workers who are making more than the minimum wage are still getting stiffed:

What the average worker wage would be in 2014 if it kept up with productivity: $71,697.
What it actually will be (according to projections): $55,644.




3. At the same time, CEOs are way overpaid:

What average CEO pay would be in 2014 if it kept up with productivity: $6.6 million.
What it actually will be in 2014 (according to projections): $16.2 million.




4. The result of all of this is that the ratio of CEO-to-average worker pay is way higher than it should be:

Average CEO pay would be 104 times average worker pay if it tracked with productivity.
Average CEO pay will actually be 328 times average worker pay in 2014 (according to projections).



MORE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/27/2014-minimum-wage_n_4501830.html

If you made $50,000 a year, the average salary of your boss would be:

Germany- $600,000
France- $750,000
Italy- $1,000,000
Canada- $1,000,000
Britain- $1,100,000

In the USA if your salary is $50,000 the average salary of your boss is: $23,750,000
28 DEC 5:26 AM

[JDPriestly]

1. Did you see the video at post # 3 here?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4234317

It explains and confirms your information. Thanks for posting this.

[kpete]

40. Thanks JDPriestly

mudh appreciated
and peace,
kp

[CrispyQ]

2. The stats in the grey box are . . . boggling.

They want to pay us third world wages but charge us first world rates. There's no way this can continue. Most of my family are maxed out on credit & have little or no cash.

[kpete]

6. more to boggle your mind:

Walmart CEO makes the average employee yearly salary every hour… Walmart employees are the single largest Mediaid AND Food Stamp consumption group

McDonalds compensated skinner(04-12) $27.7 million and fast food(McDonalds employees making the largest pool) employees draw about $7billion in public assistance annually

This will make u sick:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/mcdonalds-ceo-pay_n_4372972.html

[CrispyQ]

8. Outrage fatigue.

At the same time workers claim they're struggling, McDonald's CEO pay is being subsidized through a tax loophole that is actually the result of a backfired effort to limit executive pay, according IPS' Anderson. In 1993, Congress capped the amount of pay companies could deduct from their tax bill at $1 million, but lawmakers left a loophole in place that lets companies deduct unlimited amounts of performance-based pay, like stock options and certain types of bonuses, from their tax bill.

“It led to this explosion of huge stock-options grants,” Anderson said. “That reform is really pointed to as one reason why CEO pay has exploded so much in the past couple of decades.”

Indeed, CEO pay has grown 127 times faster than worker pay over the past 30 years, according to a May 2012 report.

Despite the discrepancy between McDonald's CEO Don Thompson's $13.8 million compensation package and the $8.94 hourly average pay for a fast-food worker, Thompson claims the company isn't exploiting its workers.

I don't think most people don't care, though. The McD's near my house has two drive-thru lanes & at meal times, the lines are so long they back into the street.

[hfojvt]

19. Wait a minute

Skinner was the CEO of McDonalds?

Then why do we have ads on DU?

Interesting about the loophole. I didn't even know there was a cap.

[malthaussen]

3. America is the land of opportunity! Well, if you're a CEO. n/t

[docgee]

4. Well, shows you the 'takers' really are. nt

[lonestarnot]

5. K and R.

[AngryOldDem]

7. It's the new slave class.

And parallel to that are the jobs that pay well, but to get that pay you have to make a Faustian bargain to give up your life, your family, and your health. You get no downtime, you get no vacation, God forbid you get sick, and the buck always stops with you. Always.

The master class has us all, coming and going.

ON EDIT: K&R.

[CrispyQ]

9. Financial security & leisure time are for the rich.

The proles can have one or the other, but not both. Although I would not call being unemployed 'leisure time' as leisure connotes having a good time & having been there, I know it's no fun when you can't pay the bills. I would not have guessed things would reverse so quickly in my lifetime. I also would not have guessed that so many people seem oblivious to what's happening.

[tblue37]

13. Most proles can't have either. A FEW proles can have a bit of money IF

They give up their personal life--but usually it is just money, not necessarily long-term financial *security*, since a worker can always be fired for one reason or another, regardless of salary level.

Also, even if the highly paid worker is frugal enough to save and to invest wisely, there is no guarantee that the financial gangsters won't pull something to crash the stockmarket so that his or her investments will end up being worth just a tiny fraction of their original value.

Only the top level owners have any real security.

[CrispyQ]

14. True.

I read an article that said Americans are trinket rich but equity poor. We have electronics, furniture & nice cars, but we have no equity, nothing substantial. I would say that pretty much sums up America, these days - nothing substantial, a husk.

[woo me with science]

20. That's exactly what it is. No hyperbole.

They are creating a system in which we must work desperately and continually to survive...in which even a week of missed work can plunge families into desperation and in which employers hold all the cards. And they are privatizing and monetizing every other aspect of our lives...from education to health care. And they are dispensing with the social supports that were meant to keep us alive when we are no longer capable of working for them.


They are structuring a system in which we literally work and exist to increase their profits, from birth to death.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. du rec

[Ilsa]

11. And there are others making a very good living that

are falling behind as well. They are middle class, worried about their retirement, saving just a tiny bit, and create incredible amounts of wealth for the owners of their business. Yet they have not seen increases in pay while they work 60+ hours a week on salary.

Largely, they are just glad to be working. They are being stomped on by this system, but they at least are eating and keeping warm.

[SomethingFishy]

26. That's me right there...

I make decent money. However I have a son in college, a wife who is disabled, 2 sons in high school and a nephew who has made his home on my couch.

70K a year seems like a lot of money till you add up the 5 people I am carrying, the medical bills, the costs related to daily care of a disabled person...

I am able to keep us warm and fed but the minute something out of the ordinary happens I'm screwed.. Saving money is but a dream for us these days...

[GeorgeGist]

12. If my salary is $100K ...

what is my bosses salary?

[SunSeeker]

23. If you're a federal employee, your boss' salary is $400,000.

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/how-much-money-does-the-president-make/

And like all government workers, the President's salary has decreased in real terms. As the above link notes, President Theodore Roosevelt earned a salary of $75,000 per year — that's $1.7 million in today's dollars.  

It is only corporate CEO's salaries that have exploded. The CEO salaries have no relationship to how much their employees get, as demonstrated by the Walmart example. Your boss, if he is a CEO, makes as much as he can get the Board of Directors to agree to. And these days, depending on the company, that is well into the millions. You see, CEO's are valuable to them because they do the Board's dirty work--offshoring, busting unions, screwing over consumers and employees. The Board can just sit back and say it's "just business"--their CEO is just doing his/her job looking out for the bottom line.

[redqueen]

15. K&R nt

[Thor_MN]

16. Time for the H1-ceo Visa.

Obviously, there is a severe shortage of CEO talent in this country, driving CEO compensation through the roof. Therefore, we must implement a non-quota H1-ceo Visa program immediately to attract CEO talent from other countries. The severe wage pressure is hurting companies across the US. To be competitive in the global market these punishing executive wages must brought in line with compensation in other countries.

[mountain grammy]

17. hear hear, and good point.

[gristy]

18. This doesn't seem right. Do you mean CEO? Instead of boss?

If you made $50,000 a year, the average salary of your boss would be:

Germany- $600,000
France- $750,000
Italy- $1,000,000
Canada- $1,000,000
Britain- $1,100,000

In the USA if your salary is $50,000 the average salary of your boss is: $23,750,000
28 DEC 5:26 AM

[Igel]

25. They're playing fast and loose with the averages.

No word on where the cut-off is, who's included, or what "boss" means. Stdev would be good.

Then again, the implicit assumption is that all wages should (or must) rise in lockstep with average productivity gains. In teaching, productivity gains have been few and small. It's sort of an artisan product--you need to be hands on and can't effectively push the mass production beyond where it was 60 years ago. It doesn't help that teachers are putting in more hours because of more regulations and requirements than ever before in my lifetime.

In other areas, productivity's increased even though individual workers haven't seen an increase in their efforts. You dispose of 80% of your workforce and replace them with robots, that happens. Presumably the workers should get the benefit of those robots?

When on a board of directors of a student-run enterprise, the store manager made some changes that really increased productivity. He copied Walmart. The workers' routines varied slightly but they didn't have to work harder. The system was restructured so it worked smarter. He got a bonus, since the entire productivity gain depended on him and one other person, not the 100 employees.

A third problem is defining "productivity." Since it's usually $/employee hour, with salaried employees defaulting to 40 hour weeks, more work can mean greater "productivity" without increasing actual productivity. Or a good price hike, as markets shift pricing, can alter productivity.

It's also possible to define it as some sort of "production unit." That makes white-color and governmental work difficult in terms of production. (Including government in productivity figures is the latest fad, and will make all previous productivity figures incompatible.)

[passiveporcupine]

29. Why should a shareholder make more

from a company's productivity than the workers who produce the product? The workers are contributors. The shareholders are not...they only bought into the company so they could sit there getting rich on the company's productivity. Without the workers, there is no company...no product. As productivity rises, it usually coincides with cost of living increases. It should only be fair that all full-time employees are shareholders and get raises appropriate to the cost of living and the increased pay of the upper management...which always goes up when productivity goes up.

[mwooldri]

37. Shareholders fund the startup of a company.

Their money is on the line when they buy the shares. That's how companies raise cash.

Employee ownership of company stock is good but not too much. Remember Enron? Too many employees bought too much Enron stock... so when the accounting shenanigans came to light, Enron stock because worthless. Employees lost their entire retirement "savings" because it was essentially Enron stock... hyped up by the executives, them knowing full well that the company was losing money.

I agree that workers are contributors, and without them, a company cannot function. But with no money to pay their wages... it's got to come from somewhere... a loan... or sale of company shares/stock.

Yes there is a huge income disparity between a regular employee and the CEO of a company. The problem is unless there is a revolution of sorts, Congress will NEVER vote for very high taxes on the very rich. Productivity won't drop like a stone instantly. IMO right now there needs to be a great big incentive for the 0.1%ers to step up and invest in America... the American people, the American infrastructure, the American institutions. An increase in the minimum wage will help, as well as welfare reform... if a company that has over 100 employees and a significant percentage of their employees draw on social assistance programs... company would be subject to a Social Support Tax. It'd be needed to be constructed in such a way that a giant company like Wal-Mart can't get away with hiring lots of part time labour and have nearly all the staff of a store be on benefits.

Yes, investors and company bosses should be rewarded well when the company does well... but yup, America... it's gone too far.

[passiveporcupine]

43. Usually a company is doing very well

By the time they go public. It's when they go public that wall street starts demanding profits and more profits. Slow and steady growth is never good enough any more. If profits don't continue to grow, shareholders would not be buying the stock. Companies go public because they get greedy. The people who started up the company want more and more profit.

Once you take a company public, it loses something. We've all seen it happen to lots of great companies...they started out great, with good social policies, and good community spirit, but eventually the god profit takes over. Yes...America has gone too far.

[Flatulo]

49. And most of us are complicit, since our retirement savings are primarily invested in equities.

We demand performance from the fund managers who've got stewardship of our IRAs and 401ks. If a fund underperforms, we move our money into a better performing fund.

We've gotten ourselves quite entwined in a cycle of short-term thinking, while our competitors have 50 year plans. It's going to be a tough system to change. Sure, we can raise the capital gains tax from its current ridiculously low 15% (it used to be 50% and the world didn't end) to something higher, but that will take a bite out of our retirement savings.

But really, the tax code is the only tool the government has to right the inequity we now have.

[SunSeeker]

21. K & R & bookmarked!

[Egalitarian Thug]

22. K&R and something I'd like to point out about CEO pay that is frequently lost in the cacophony,

CEOs do not work alone. Every sixteen million dollar man comes with a COO and usually a CFO as well. All the chiefs extract salaries and benefits proportionate to the CEOs, and then each of these chiefs have an assortment of Presidents, Directors, and Special Assistants, each of whom is also extracting a commensurate salary, and so on down at least three levels and I've seen as many as five.

So while $16M per year for driving a company into bankruptcy court may seem like a lot, and it is, the reality behind that $16M salary is something in the neighborhood of ten or fifteen times that much is extracted by the non-productive executive class.

But the problem is worker's pay.

[Flatulo]

50. One company I worked for had 80 vice-presidents. And it wasn't that big an outfit, 4000 people.

[Egalitarian Thug]

52. That's pretty extreme, but not nearly as unusual as I'd like to believe.

Would you tell me what they did and in what part of the country?

I didn't even start down the road of the of the other big sinkholes, like legal departments.

[Flatulo]

53. Maxtor Corporation, disc drive manufacturer. They had design centers in Colorado, Massachusetts,

and California. All manufacturing was done in Singapore, but the bulk of those VPs were in the states.

What really cracked we peons up was when they named a VP of Executive Compensation. Guess what that person recommended... Higher compensation. What a shock.

One of the most maddening stunts they pulled was in 2003 when they had $70m available for the profit sharing plan. The CEO got 1/2 of that right off the top. $35m. The next quarter went to the top five or six VPs of this or that. The last quarter was divided amongst the remaining 3,992 people. I actually got a few thousand bucks out of that and was quite happy with it. But $35m to one guy, who was in fact quite a dimbulb and ran the company into a ditch within a few years. He ended up selling the whole enterprise to competitor Seagate, who laid-off 90% of the workforce. They had the gall to call it a merger. They kept a small number of engineers.

[Egalitarian Thug]

55. A lot of really good tech companies were gutted by their executives like this.

I saw similarly egregious scenarios played out at CompUSA and HP.

[Flatulo]

56. I know - I worked for a lot of them.

DEC, HP, Data General, Quantum, Maxtor and lastly Evergreen Solar - all solid companies with good products and tech busted up and sold off. A handful of really evil people got mind-bogglingly wealthy at the expense of hundred of thousands of workers. DEC alone jettisoned 130,000 people when Bob Palmer busted it up in the nineties. He got $90m if I recall.

If this is what modern capitalism has devolved to, then we're doomed and need to find a better way.

[jtuck004]

24. Worse, the way many are able to do that is debt, and that debt is paid by the worker.

And when there is a shortfall, the workers pay, in a variety of ways.

Yet those at the top demand even more...

[SoCalDem]

27. Anecdotal/real-life tells the same tale.. Talk to anyone over 60

They will gladly tell you how a relatively LOW income (by today's standards), used to provide a fairly decent lifestyle.

Men who worked at Sears, gas stations, bowling alleys, small factories, supported a wife & kids, bought a house, bought cars, took vacations, sent kids to college, etc.. and saved money..

Young people routinely moved out after high school, got a job (or went to college).. The ones who stayed local & got jobs, also got apartments, and lived autonomously.

If you lived in a BIG city, there were challenges, but for most places, young people had NO debt, and could easily support themselves.

Our "leaders" have been telling us "inflation is low", but the cost-creep, combined with stagnant wages & easy credit over a 30 year period has finally devastated our economy.

The increase in costs that should have been going to workers all along (in the form of wages, benefits & profit sharing) has been gobbled up by the wall-street beast & the CEO vampires.

With globalization/computerization where it is now, the jobs necessary to sustain the remnants from an earlier era, who still need employment have mostly disappeared, and will never return.

Personal freedoms and choices are better now, but with a stagnant economy and suppressed aspirations of the majority, I foresee a very turbulent time ahead..especially for people who are 20-40 now.. How can they build a future for themselves when they are always on the edge of financial disaster.

[Brigid]

36. Just think of Walt Kowalski in "Gran Torino":

He must have had a pretty typical life for a working-class guy of his generation from Detroit: He probably joined the Army out of high school or was drafted, got out after the war, returned home, went to work at the Ford plant for decades, saved money to marry and buy a decent house in what was then a decent neighborhood, got married, raised a couple of kids and put them through college, all the while saving money for retirement and/or paying into a pension plan or Social Security. When he retired, he was financially stable and could enjoy the fruits of all his hard work. Who has that kind of economic stability nowadays?

[llmart]

41. I am certainly sympathetic to all of this.....

but let's be honest about a few things too. My parents and my in-laws (both sets WWII generation) never flew on an airplane in their lives. They didn't go to resort vacations/cruises/fancy honeymoons. They had weddings that were in a church with the reception of punch and finger sandwiches in the basement of that church and a honeymoon of two days in Niagara Falls. They owned two couches in their entire lives, never owned a new car or two cars at one time. They didn't start out in a small house and move up - they lived in small, 950 square foot "Levittown" type houses all of their lives. Most of their cohorts lived the same way. They were depression era people who knew how to be frugal. They got together with friends and played cards for enjoyment and went to movies occasionally.

[passiveporcupine]

47. I agree

that we do tend to live better today than our parents did. But if they are still alive, most of them are living better now too. My Mom was raised during the depression, and she is on her forth couch, I think. She has flown on planes (not when she was younger), and she still does not do fancy resort vacations or cruises (but I don't know anyone who does those things). She has stayed in cabins at the beach. She got married at home and had a small family gathering (her second marriage) and I'm sure it was a frugal honeymoon. And she currently lives in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house that is probably 1200 to 1400 sq. feet, with an attached garage apartment she lets out. She has been there since 1961. She has had some major remodeling done and added a car port/shed. She has a new car now and when she was married, she and her husband each had their own car (they both worked and traveled in different directions). I do remember a couple of "new" cars when I was growing up. Nothing fancy. They did not put any of us kids through college. We had to do that on our own. But college used to be something kids could work to pay for. Now it's pretty much impossible without grants/loans/scholarships/parents.

The other thing is that they had fixed rate 30 year loans, and if they stayed in the same place, their homes are paid for now, because they weren't very expensive to begin with. And medical costs did not bankrupt people like they do today.

Our parents did not live on credit cards in those days, so they were paying more reasonable prices for much of what they bought. They saved until they could afford to buy something and they didn't pay all that interest. And they were saving a lot more money than we do today.

So, while there is some truth to what you say, your anecdote does not represent all depression era kids and how they lived as adults, or how they live now. And looking at homes, education and college, expenses have changed a lot these days, compared to expenses back then.

[KentuckyWoman]

48. I kindof live this way

Make do or do without is still a way of life in this part of Kentucky.....but to be fair a 2nd car is cheaper than Dad's horses cost him.

[Flatulo]

51. My dad was a school custodian, and we lived pretty well. We had good food, our own home,

and a car and color TV. Sure, we wore hand-me-down clothes and never tasted the good cuts of meat, but we did OK. We three kids all went to college, too. Tuition was less than $4000. And this was just 1973.

[Brigid]

28. Welcome back to the nineteenth century.

[blkmusclmachine]

30. YAY, "Trickle Down."

Savvy!

[fleabiscuit]

31. It can be a bit depressing,

but it's easy enough to look at your own work payment history to see if you have gained or flatlined. Or worse.

http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

[mwooldri]

39. I guess I'm lucky.

My income has kept pace with inflation. I'm making about the same money I was in 2000 as I do now in 2013. My employer hasn't changed, nor the core job responsibilities. However if I'm no longer employed by my employer, an equivalent job would be a significant drop in income. I do call center work (though not in a call center).. the level 2 stuff. If I did get another job with another employer with very similar duties, $30k/yr would be the best I think I could get around here. Considering that I grossed about $50k this year (it does include bonuses) , this would be a huge drop. The starting wage for my type of work hasn't changed much since 2000 - especially since this is a high unemployment area (GSO).

Yes, I'm lucky. But I shouldn't be. What I have should be normal for everyone. Something should be done to keep people who are doing a good job at the same thing year in, year out, with an income that keeps up with the cost of living increases. I don't have an answer.

[indepat]

32. These are the fruits inuring to society when government has done the bidding of large corporations

the uber-wealthy for decades to the extreme detriment of society as a whole and in direct contravention of the spirit and letter of the constitutional mandate to promote the general welfare.

[Enthusiast]

34. K&R! nt

[Wolf Frankula]

35. In My Experience

The average CEO's job would be better done by the empty chair in his office.

But that's just my experience.

Wolf

[Brigid]

38. Remember that old movie "Nine to Five?"

Where the three women did their boss's work and nobody knew he was missing for weeks?

[XRubicon]

46. lol

[WillyT]

42. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[kpete]

57. you are SO welcome

Happy New Year WillyT
and peace to you and yours,
kp

[ErikJ]

44. The only solution: Double the top tax rates.

The top tax rate is so low now that it makes it worth paying sky high salaries and compensation to the top guys while forgetting about the workers.

[passiveporcupine]

54. other countries get it

[quote]French high court approves 75 percent tax rate on executive salaries

He [Hollande] had said the idea was “not to punish” but added that he hoped it would spur companies to lower executive pay at a time when the economy is suffering, unemployment is soaring and workers are being asked to accept wage cuts.[/quote]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/29/french-high-court-approves-75-percent-tax-rate-on-executive-salaries/

[XRubicon]

45. knr

[woo me with science]

58. K&R

[FatBuddy]

59. Until neckties are turned into nooses

nothing will change.

the only thing the 1% fears is violent, collective action of what our Founding Fathers referred to as the "mob" or the "vulgar" or the "great unwashed masses."