[mschuster91]

Simple: A lot of the productivity gains of the last decades is thanks to globalization, automation and digitalization - basically, many high-paying manual jobs were eliminated by machines, a lot of lower-paying manual jobs (or environmentally problematic production that would have needed expensive adjustments in the US/EU) was shifted off to China, and digitalization eliminated or vastly improved paper-pusher jobs.

Additionally, the standing of unions went down over time, as a combination of legitimate unions-gone-rogue scandals, anti-union legislation being enacted and union-protection enforcement being reduced.

The result was that the capitalist owner and leadership class enjoyed absurd amounts of net worth gains, and the worker class was left unemployed or with stagnating wages at best. To prove that: CEO payments exploded 940% since 1978, S&P went up 707%, while average worker pay went up only 12% [1] in the same time frame.

[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

[zip1234]

You are saying the owners want to pay everyone as little as possible, so why would CEO pay go up? I suspect the reason is more about competing for the best CEOs because of their importance to a company.

[mschuster91]

CEO pay is peanuts compared to what raising wages to all employees would cost.

[thrown_22]

People assume that inequality is expensive. It isn't. Income inequality is what a failing society does to motivate people by meeting their greed rather than meeting their needs. An island of concubines is a lot cheaper to give to a CEO than paying 100,000 employees enough for an electric car.

[mschuster91]

> Income inequality is what a failing society does to motivate people by meeting their greed rather than meeting their needs.

Workers are not greedy for simply needing enough money to rent or own a home! In the same time frame, average US-wide rent has gone up from ~200$ to 1100$ [1] - that's a 450% increase. In "hot" areas such as SF, the development has been even worse [2]. On top of that, other necessities of life such as groceries have also continuously gotten more and more expensive [3], not to mention more expensive to obtain as neighborhood grocery stores closed down in favor of large malls.

We're talking about bare survival here. The costs of living have exploded for decades, while wages have been stagnant. People couldn't set aside money as a result, and now we have over half the US population unable to cover a 1000$ emergency without going into (even more) debt [4]. Wanting more money is not greed in these conditions.

[1] https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-yea...

[2] https://medium.com/@mccannatron/1979-to-2015-average-rent-in...

[3] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/average-pric...

[4] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/19/56percent-of-americans-cant-...

[thrown_22]

Ok, but that has nothing to do with my post.

[mschuster91]

Of course it has. You're claiming that societies are "motivate people by meeting their greed", whereas the reality is that people are struggling to survive instead of being greedy.