May 31, 2018--You Say You Want A Revolution . . .

. . . Well, you know.

At breakfast the other morning John asked, "Have you heard anything about the Revolution?"

"God knows," Rona said, "There's good reason why there should be one."

"We're living in a second Gilded Age," John said. "What with 1 percent of the population owning 40 percent of the nation's wealth. That should be enough to get one going." 

Rona said, "Did you see the long piece in this weekend's New York Times about CEO compensation? Among other things, company by company, it calculated how many years workers earning average salaries would have to work to earn as much as their CEO makes in just one year."

"I did see that," I said.

John indicated he had as well and how outrageous the data were.

"My memory isn't perfect," Rona said, "So, John can you look the article up on your smartphone? I remember the title, 'Want To Make Money Like A CEO?'"

He did and cited some of the statistics--

At Walmart, for example, the world's largest employer, the median salary for workers is a paltry $19,177. Last year the CEO received $22.2 million in compensation. This means it would take average employees more than 1,000 years to earn what the CEO earns in 12 months.

"Unbelievable," Rona said.

Listen to this one," John said, "At Time Warner median compensation is a hefty $75,217 but since the CEO makes $49 million it would take typical employees 651 years to earn that."

Now I said, "Unbelievable. From the Times I remember the earnings numbers for a company I never heard of, where things are even more unequal. And that's saying a lot."

"Maybe Live Nation?" John said. "They are in the concert and ticketing business and the CEO last year made a whopping $70.6 million while the median salary there was $24,406. That means the workers have to live and work 2,893 years to earn that much."

"They should live and be well," I said, feeling my blood at full boil. 

"So, you asked about the Revolution," Rona said, sounding ironic. "Numbers like these should make everyone but CEOs crazy and take to the streets in anger to protest and, who knows, revolt."

"I hate to sound cynical," I said, "But who's more likely to make a revolution--Bernie's people or Trump's?"

We sat in silence for a few minutes not wanting to answer since we knew what we were feeling and it didn't make us happy.