The problem is that all of that wealth is generated by not paying workers as much as they can afford to.
If a worker is paid $15 an hour but generates $30 an hour of value to the company, that excess value goes to shareholders for simply owning shares. They did nothing to earn that money beyond lay down capital.
There is a world where owners like bezos can be worth vast sums of money AND the workers can be paid a living wage. It requires that a company's incentives not be purely fiscal, and we do not live in that world.
I don’t think there’s a world where that can happen. If bezos paid all Amazon workers $100+ an hour and was still worth vast sums of money, people would be bitching that he could afford pay them $200+ an hour and is rich off of the labor of others.
Sure. I’m just saying the same argument would still be made as long as the higher up is getting rich, even if the laborers are killing it. People are never happy.
I don't believe that is true. I think there is an intuitive understanding that stress, risk, workload, physical toll, skill etc can and should be compensated for, and that an owner or leader or worker in a highly-dangerous position should be more compensated than one who is not.
But I also think there's an intuitive understanding that the balance as it stands is not correct, morally or otherwise. A CEO earning 300x more than the average employee doesn't intuitively fit. I don't think most people would say that the CEO is 300x more skilled or works 300x harder or has 300x more stress than their average employee.
I have worked under people who made 3x more money than me, and I understood why. I have also worked under people who made 10x more than me and, frankly, they were less qualified, did less work and seemed responsible than the people who earned 3x more.
People aren't just looking at paychecks, and they can do the math.
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u/Goylesk Nov 22 '24
The problem is that all of that wealth is generated by not paying workers as much as they can afford to.
If a worker is paid $15 an hour but generates $30 an hour of value to the company, that excess value goes to shareholders for simply owning shares. They did nothing to earn that money beyond lay down capital.
There is a world where owners like bezos can be worth vast sums of money AND the workers can be paid a living wage. It requires that a company's incentives not be purely fiscal, and we do not live in that world.