What do you think of the following? What's ridicules is the claims made. First, the CEOs referred to are not all CEOs, but the few that work for Americas several hundred largest corporations. If the compensation of those CEOs - most of which is in stock awards - were zero, it would have an insignificant impact on each worker. The CEO pay is not at the expense of workers, but shareholders.

Do the math as I did. Look at the CEO compensation of a S&P 500 company and divide it by the number of workers and see the impact.

Sen Warren ignores the impact of non- cash compensation which is one of several factors limiting pay raises. According to BLS-generated compensation cost indices, total benefit costs for all civilian workers have risen an inflation-adjusted 22.5% since 2001 (when the data series began), versus 5.3% for wage and salary costs. Most of that coming from health care benefits.

We're in this fight because our economy is rigged in favor of the ultra-wealthy and corporations, which means workers get the short end of the stick. Thanks to EPI's research, we know that today, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio is a ridiculous 351-to-1. The escalation of CEO compensation has fueled the growth of the top 1.0% incomes at the expense of U.S. workers, widening the gap between very high earners and everyone else.

We also know that, while worker productivity grew by 61.7% between 1979 and 2020, workers' median wages grew by only 23.1%. For Black and Hispanic workers, wage growth was even slower, at 18.9% and 16.7%, respectively. You know what those numbers scream out to me? That we need to put more power in the hands of workers and boost wage growth to level the playing field and reduce racial and ethnic inequities.

Elizabeth Warren From e-mail seeking donations for the Economic Policy Institute 12-28-21

The US labor force is 157 million of which 22.5 million are government workers. The large companies of the type referenced for CEO pay employ about 17% of all workers.

CEO compensation has nothing to do, no impact, on the workers of America. The large numbers - and sometimes underserved pay of CEOs - presents an easy target to push the notion of a rigged, unfair economy as Sen Warren believes, nothing more.


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