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Monday, April 15, 2013

Not so tough at the top

In 2012, American CEOs of S&P 500 Index companies averaged $12.3 million in total compensation, while rank-and-file worker wages averaged $34,645, for a ratio of 354 to one.


In Canada, it's 206 to one.

In Germany, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio is 147 to one.

CEO pay has skyrocketed while the average worker’s pay has stagnated despite increases in productivity. Capitalism is so rigged that no matter what happens, the rich keep getting richer and workers continue paying for it in the form of slashed jobs, wages, health benefits and pensions.

A new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, on the well-being of children in 35 developed nations, turned up some alarming statistics about child poverty. More than one in five American children fall below a relative poverty line, which UNICEF defines as living in a household that earns less than half of the national median. The United States ranks 34th of the 35 countries surveyed, above only Romania.

Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. His description of capitalism as the “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,” nevertheless seems up to date in to-days world .


American workers are the most productive in the world. US worker productivity increased 80 percent from 1973 to 2011, eight times as much as hourly worker compensation. The average worker is responsible for $63,885 of wealth per year. Yet more than a third of households make less than $30,000 a year. The US have the highest percentage of low wage workers in the world–almost 25 percent. The people who bring us our food–farm workers, food processers, restaurant workers and grocery workers–usually make poverty wages. The people who we trust to take care of our children, parents, grandparents and sometimes ourselves when we are sick or disabled; people who work in nursing homes and hospitals; nannies, childcare and Head Start workers–all of these crucial workers are all too often making poverty wages. Fifty percent of personal care workers live in poverty. Most of them are women, and 40 percent of female-headed households live in poverty.

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