[Sone7]

The authors of the report anticipated your criticism:

"Critics of examining these trends suggest looking at the pay of the average CEO, not CEOs of the largest firms. However, the average firm is very small, employing just 20 workers, and does not represent a useful comparison to the pay of a typical worker who works in a firm with roughly 1,000 workers. Half (52 percent) of employment and 58 percent of total payroll are in firms with more than 500 or more employees. Firms with at least 10,000 workers provide 27.9 percent of all employment and 31.4 percent of all payroll."

Also, you'd think they could have at least mentioned possible distortion of average wage figures, considering they base their entire article on the idea that top companies paying their employees well are somehow responsible for the insane levels of inequality.

It worries me that this turd of an article is getting attention (no disrespect OP). The 8 richest people who own the wealth of 3.5 billion people would probably find it real fucking funny that the 'esteemed' Harvard Business Review is blaming Google employees for the inequality we all face.

[natoliniak]

> blaming Google employees for the inequality we all face.

exactly. The employees riding that bus are ultimately in the same economic boat as the ones throwing the rocks. They might be slightly better off, but are still probably 3-5 paychecks away from being homeless and without health insurance. The ones who are responsible for this polarity and who have the power to do something about this, do not ride on the 7:30am employee shuttles.

[pitaj]

Their anticipation doesn't cover the criticism.

If you want an average (average worker to CEO) pay ratio, then doing what they did is also inaccurate.

I think that you should pick the average firm size, select a sample of firms around that size, and then get the pay ratio from that set.

[Sone7]

I think you've missed the point, a couple times.

First, the EPI weren't trying to find the "average worker to CEO" pay, they were examining trends to determine how well the top 1 and 0.1 percent were doing in 2014.

Second, the article is blaming the largest and most successful companies and using their average wage to make their point - while making no attempt to account for or mention the CEO getting paid as much as 300 or more workers. This is a pretty gross mistake, and I find it disturbing that the HBR could spread bullshit like this.

Third, a study that looks at the top 350 firms' ratio of CEO to worker pay is in this case :more: relevant than the average of all companies, as the article is talking about :the largest companies:.

What I want to know is, why are so many people trying to make an issue of the EPI study I referenced, when the HBR article is riddled with basic, glaring errors and ludicrous claims?

[pitaj]

I was only addressing the your comments regarding the study addressing certain criticisms. I didn't read the article, and I don't really care about it.

Yes, them using the mean wage at those companies is inaccurate. They should probably be using median instead.