Some thoughts around income inequality

It’s crazy times we live in.

The latest stats show that CEO pay is close to 300 times that of shop-floor-shmuck pay.

Put another way, consider the income of someone making the US federal minimum wage of $7.25. Over their lifetime, if that worker begins full-time employment at age fifteen, they’ll have to work well into their eighties before they’ve hit a million dollars in lifetime earnings.

CEO compensation, on the other hand, is typically a million dollars a month or more in your upper echelon of corporate entities.

I’m well acquainted with the arguments in favour of massive income inequality. That’s no surprise; we all are! People who make a lot of money are smarter and work harder. That’s the standard response from our billionaire-owned media. What else would they say?

There’s certainly an element of truth to that. But, are they really three hundred times as smart as the shop-floor worker? Do they really work three hundred times harder?

I’m all in with the idea that a hard worker should make more than the shirker. At least twice as much…

And obviously, somebody really smart should, if they are a hard worker, make even more! Maybe even twice as much as that hard worker of average intelligence…

But nobody anywhere is three hundred times smarter than the person next to them, nor is it possible to work three hundred times harder!

The level of income disparity in the USA today is absolutely unconscionable.

Three multi-billionaires have more net worth than half the population? How is such a thing possible?

It’s possible because the billionaire class has bought the political system. They bought it because they can afford it. The rest of us can’t. The supreme court decision on Citizen’s United cemented their purchase into the law of the land.

And here we are.

It’s the plutocrats driving foreign policy. War is good for business.

It’s the plutocrats driving domestic policy. We’d have to raise taxes to provide decent education, housing, and health care… and who needs that? Plutocrats already have decent education, housing, and health care.

The Exceptional Nation is operating at maximum efficiency!

Only a traitor would rock the boat…