this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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The income gap between executive and median salary employees is around 32,000%. I guess the question is, what planet do you live on where a system that allows for this kind of inequity is okay?
There are countries with way better CEO to work pay ratios. But in the USA we act like it's totally normal to have these huge wealth gaps, when in reality they are recent phenonemon and the only other era they were repeated was the gilded age which resulted in a decades long depression that was only ended by a world war.
A CEO earns 354x the income of a normal worker in the US. It's really insane what happens over there. I'm really glad a CEO in Germany only earns 154x the income of a normal worker, much more fair over here!
I'm kidding, we are all fucked. US citizen say a ratio 6.7 would be justified, Germans say 6.3.
So you're telling me i need to store a lot of canned beans in a nearby cave system?
This any many other issues with capitalism could be solved with better legislation and regulations.
The problem is getting and keeping people in power who actually want to reign in capitalism.
But now in almost every country, the capitalists are the ones making regulations. They're not going to do it to themselves.
But then that's not capitalism. Capitalism is making as much money as possible unrestricted as much as possible. If you start doing things like putting a maximum wage in, or taxing the highest earners and giving back to the lowest, that's socialism.
Which is controlled by those with capital.
Why should I give a fuck about inequity?
On the chance that you are being sincere in asking:
Here is an interesting video about the state of wealth inequality in the US. And this is an interesting talk about the effects of inequality on many aspects of society.
Interesting in what sense? Unless someone was unaware of the status quo, the video doesn't particularly provide any useful perspective as to why I should agree that inequity is an issue.
Ok, and I ask, so what? It seems to be operating under the same higher-level argument as just talking about the inequality directly. That higher level argument being that our goals should be raising these aggregate metrics of society, for my lack of better phrasing. But that just circles back to the same question, just more broad: why should that be the set of principles I believe we should pursue?
Oh well. It was worth a try.
Lmao why even bother pretending you're here in good faith if all you're going to do is assume everyone who disagrees is insincere
I thought you seriously were asking why you should care. If the stark negative impacts of wealth inequality on just about any metric of a healthy society means nothing to you, well, I guess you're right. You aren't the type of person who is going to care. I didn't come here to have an argument, just tried to give some info on why you might want to care, if you were coming from an angle of yeah, I don't know something, feel free to englighten me. Like I said, it was worth a try.