OT: The American Pay Gap

[Slinky]

... The total number of people employed in the U.S. at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald’s and Yum Brands restaurants exceeds the entire 2.7 million population of Chicago. Net income at those three companies has jumped by at least 22 percent from four years ago. ... Shareholders, not employees, have reaped the rewards. McDonald’s, for example, spent $6 billion on share repurchases and dividends last year, the equivalent of $14,286 per restaurant worker employed by the company.... Twenty years ago, when Johnson first started at McDonald’s, the CEO’s compensation was about 230 times that of a full-time worker paid the federal minimum wage. The $8.75 million that Thompson’s predecessor as CEO, Skinner, made last year was 580 times, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. ...The pay gap between the average S&P 500 CEO and the average U.S. worker, which was 42 times in 1980, widened to 380 times in 2011 from 325 times in 2010, the umbrella group of 56 unions said. ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-1 ... y-gap.html

[ChicagoGranny]

Shareholders, not employees, have reaped the rewards.

Yes, shareholders like workers pension plans, teachers pension plans, union pension plans, workers 401k plans, lots and lots of "little" people.

You can't have it both ways Slinky. Prosperity for citizens requires profitable companies. The more profitable, the more general prosperity in our country.

Very happy to see these three companies providing so many jobs and giving good returns to the shareholders.

[chunkyfrog]

The kinds of jobs offered at McDonalds:
How many pay a living wage, provide minimum benefits, including healthcare?
The only real beneficiaries are the "shareholders", and in the case of the "little guys",
the managers and agents of those funds, who are in a position to pull their share off the top.

[Slinky]

Okay, so don't begrudge the shareholders. Its the CEO pay, the gap between workers and CEO compensation, that disturbs me.

[johnthomasmacdonald]

Good book on this phenomenon by sociologist Barbara Ehrenreich " Nickel and Dimned " when she went undercover for a couple of years and worked at places like Walmart, McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts to see how people could survive on such wages (they couldn't) and how they were treated (like slaves). Because of this book i try to only shop at stores which treat their workers somewhat decently and try to pay a living wage ( for example, Costco's rather than walmart - even though we are a tiny family which really doesn't want a garbage pail sized can of string beans ) and Starbuck's over DD ( even though i prefer dunkin's coffee )

Of course people who work full time at such places don't even deserve health care and should just die if they get ill ( or maybe as Ron Paul said they can get they medical care paid for by their church or their neighbors - yeah, that'll work! "

I never thought i would regret the fall of the Soviet Union but i think that when they existed, big business and the rich at least threw the poor and working class a bone because they feared that people on the bottom had an alternative if things got desperate enough - now they don't care at all. The Reds scared them a bit, now their arrogance knows no bounds.

[chunkyfrog]

Retail and fast food workers work so hard, receiving so little compensation and so little respect;
as we go about our shopping, we need to be mindful and treat these people kindly,
as they rarely get even that from their employers.