The Guardian reports that American CEO compensation has risen to 351 times the pay for workers in recent decades. Said compensation has gone up by 1,322% since 1978. One-thousand, three-hundred and twenty-two percent, that is. ⁱ

     The rise in worker’s pay for the same period: 18.9%.

     CEO compensation has even outdistanced the rest of the top 0.1% by six times (note: not the “One Percent,” that we talk about, but rather the point one percent).

     At the same time, right now CEO’s and other pundits are decrying the so-called “labour shortage,” and are blaming the Covid-related unemployment benefits for people not returning to work. Although all labour is of course honourable, it could be that in addition to benefits, the pandemic has resulted in people reconsidering their crap jobs and despotic bosses, the same jobs that pay starvation wages, and so they are understandably resisting the return.

     The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which translates to a whopping $290 a week before taxes. Good luck trying to live on $290 a week in the U.S. in 2021. It is a little-recognized fact, obscured by right-wing ideology and propaganda, that the majority of officially poor households in North America have at least one member working full-time, full-year.ⁱⁱ

     Another fact: had the minimum wage kept pace with inflation and worker productivity since the late seventies, we would have a $24 per hour minimum wage, rather than fighting over a paltry $15/hour. It would not be hard to get to $24/hour – just take it out of the CEO compensation, and also have us, the consumers, pay what – a dollar more? – for our poison-burgers and side of death-fries at McDonald’s.

     There is an upside. As compensation for this ongoing trickle-up (or torrent?) of wealth from the lower to the highest economic classes, we can at least be entertained by watching billionaires using the fruit of their workers’ labour to race into space in their phallus-shaped rockets.