A recent Facebook post making the rounds - The 99% Needs A Raise

[OmahaBlueDog]

Posted by: The 99 Uniting http://www.facebook.com/#!/the99uniting

[WillyT]

1. K & R !!!

[cthulu2016]

2. A suggestion

If I were doing this graphic I would not use a gallon of milk as the example item.

People (myself included) do not have a gut level sense of 0.01 seconds versus 0.1 seconds or even 1 second. We don't operate in those terms.

I would use a new pickup truck. Mister moneybags works a minute or minute and a half. The minimum wage figure works a couple of years.

[OmahaBlueDog]

3. I think the point is that it's an everyday consumable

..but your point is very valid. That truck may never come to Mr. Minimum Wage; Mr. Median Wage can buy it on a five-year note; Mr. CEO makes that truck in an hour and a half.

[TalkingDog]

5. I agree. A list of several items over a wide purchase price range would be most effective.

Gallon of milk

Child's Bicycle or Laptop Computer or Item X

Brand new pickup truck

[neeksgeek]

4. My first job out of college (in the year 2000) paid $20,823 a year.

About what Mr. Moneybags there gets in an hour.....

[TalkingDog]

6. Hi neeksgeek, Welcome to DU

[neeksgeek]

8. Thanks!

[Beartracks]

7. Wait, where's the part where money trickles down to guy on the left??

You mean that's a MYTH????



===================

[MattBaggins]

13. Bush The First didn't call it Voodoo Economics for nothing

[lastlib]

9. And CEO Guy needs a TAX INCREASE!!

AND a pay cut!!

[OmahaBlueDog]

10. I think $332 an hour (20 times what median guy makes) should be more than sufficient for anyone

After that, it's flat-out greed, and should be taxed accordingly.

[progress2k12nbynd]

11. I get the minimum wage earner and the median wage earner...

But I don't get CEO guy at all? This can't be representative of CEO's on average as there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of CEO's out there making a couple hundred thousand a year or less, like my hospital's CEO. No chump change for sure but these kind of CEO salaries are FAR more common than the $40m salary that this graphic seems to want to say is the norm.

The creator of this graphic could be a little less misleading and still achieve his intent to show the very real problem here of income inequality; I'm not sure why he chose to use such a misleading extreme.

[CubicleGuy]

12. CEO guy doesn't drink milk

He pours Château Lafite Rothschild on his breakfast cereal.

[Duer 157099]

14. Who are you kidding?

He doesn't eat cereal, that's for barnyard animals. He pours it on his caviar.

[Ikonoklast]

16. Then gives it to his dog. Caviar gives the CEO gas.

It's not that the dog likes it, it's the idea that he can afford to feed the dog caviar, so he does.

Same reason the CEO has six house, four of which he hardly ever sees...it's because he can, not because he needs to.

[CJCRANE]

15. It should show equivalent to gallons of milk earned per hour...

Which would be...

* Minimum Wage Earner: 2 gallons of milk
* Median Wage Earner : 4.5 gallons
* CEO.......................: 5,459 gallons

[neeksgeek]

17. To put it another way...

The CEO could go into the typical grocery store and empty the entire milk cooler in one purchase, and probably have change left from that hour's work.

[ThoughtCriminal]

24. Less than a tank-load

The CEO will have to work another 5 or 6 minutes to top it off.

[harun]

18. What about the share holders, which BTW don't work?

[OmahaBlueDog]

19. I'm a shareholder in many companies. I am very much in median wage earner land.

In fact, many shareholders would do well to question executive pay at every stockholder meeting and every other chance they got. Not even the CEOs of the most profitable companies should make 1000x multiples of salary (or more) over their average workers.

[harun]

23. I was commenting within the context of the graphic

And the point was there is more injustice to the equation than what was being displayed.

We need to take the focus off of income vs. income and on to nothing vs. wealth. The capital owners get to play by a different set of rules.

The problem with you as a stockholder is that the system is setup to make sure you don't actually have any real say in the way things are done. A few very very large holders of shares (institutions) are who really gets to call the shots. They are fine paying the CEO those kinds of wages because their wages (profits, wealth and capital accumation) are much much higher than the CEO's.

So the holders/owners of the Capital are the real ones to compare to the lower and median wage earners. Because one of them is represented in how the company and country is run and the other is NOT.

[Robb]

20. Minor quibble:

I just bought milk, $2.77/gallon for the non-hormone stuff. $1.88 when it's on sale, which is once or twice a month.

Is $3.70 more common?

[OmahaBlueDog]

21. It's like gasoline - there's regional variance

I think I paid $2 for a gallon of regular, grocery store brand skim last night, but that was on special. Normally, it's like 3.30.

[Robb]

22. That's kind of what I figured.

I'm also sort of hoping I live in a cheap milk region.