CEOs Show Us How To Raise Everyone’s Pay

Jim Hightower's Lowdown

Here’s a progressive idea I picked up from the unlikeliest of sources: Corporate CEOs!

For decades, these chieftains of our economic order have been steadily implementing a very visionary process for establishing corporate wage levels. The essence of it is this: Let the workers set their own pay! Since the 1970s, when the idea began taking hold in Corporate America, pay levels have zoomed up by more than 1,000 percent.

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Well… not for you. This set-your-own pay movement has only been available to top corporate executives, whose median paychecks now top $16 million a year! But since it’s been a boon for this test group, I say it’s time to expand the no-hassle compensation concept to all employees. This would greatly boost grassroots purchasing power, economic growth, and fairness for all.

“Omigod no!” squawk corporate apologists, rushing to say that, technically, CEOs do not directly set their pay. Rather, the bosses have attached their earnings to their corporations’ ever-rising stock prices. Thus, astronomical rewards go to those who obsessively focus on jacking-up the price of their own stock, even though that’s a selfishly-narrow and false measure of a corporation’s performance.

Also, stock price is no indicator of a CEO’s worthiness. Even bosses who’re blockheads can still get a boost simply because they’ve rigged the system to hitch a free ride on inflated stock value.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Still, if it’s good enough for them, why not an equal deal for working stiffs, who actually deliver the products and services that give a corporation some true value. I say, each worker should get the same percentage increase in pay that the top honcho takes. It’s a very simple process… and it’s only fair.

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