Here's the list of top 100 ‘low-wage’ US firms that are fucking over their employees (listed in the full 'Institute for Policy Studies' report):
Lowe's
Home Depot
Walmart
S&P Global
Linde Plc
Autozone
O'Reilly Automotive
Nike
Target
Dollar General
Analog Devices
Sherwin-Williams
McDonald's
Mondelez Intl
Amazon.com
TJX
MGM Resorts Intl
Best Buy
Starbucks
Kroger
Johnson Controls
Seagate Technology
Colgate-Palmolive
Philip Morris Intl
Marriott Intl
Cognizant Tech
Solutions
Fleetcor Technologies
FedEx
Estee Lauder
TE Connectivity
Domino's Pizza
Constellation Brands
YUM Brands
Ulta Beauty
Coca-Cola
Stanley Black &
Decker
Mosaic
Ross Stores
Hilton Worldwide
Bath & Body Works
Corning
Becton Dickinson & Co
Amphenol
Dollar Tree
Tractor Supply
Tapestry
Whirlpool
LKQ
Skyworks Solutions
Advance Auto Parts
Carrier Global
Amcor Plc
Assurant
Darden Restaurants
Walgreens Boots
Alliance
Costco Wholesale
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Mohawk Industries
Microchip Technology
DXC Technology
ON Semiconductor
Hershey
Kimberly-Clark
Ralph Lauren
Tyson Foods
Wabtec
Baxter Intl
Align Technology
Smith (A.O.)
VF
Robert Half Intl
Genuine Parts
Avery Dennison
Kraft Heinz
Borgwarner
Factset Research
Systems
PPG Industries
Newell Brands
Fastenal
Carnival
Viatris
Live Nation
Entertainment
Wynn Resorts
Garmin
Cooper Cos
Extra Space Storage
Aptiv
Mccormick & Co
Epam Systems
Royal Caribbean
Group
Norwegian Cruise Line
Iron Mountain
AES
Teleflex
Western Digital
Caesars Entertainment
Copart
Las Vegas Sands
Monolithic Power
Systems
Public Storage
The article is about a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies which identifies the top 100 ‘low-wage’ US firms. The full report is linked from the article to here: https://ips-dc.org/report-executive-excess-2023/ , I opened the PDF and pulled out the full list.
They are not only fucking over their employees. They're fucking over all tax payers and straining the countries they are allowed to operate in, while funneling those dollars to top executives and shareholders.
These companies rely on social programs like welfare and food stamps to support their front line staff. They drain those programs for their own profits, and leave the governments less able to help their people. This is vampire capitalism.
A good reason to have laws regulating the maximum pay gap between executive and the lowest paid peon. And make sure to include all types of pay like stock options so companies can’t squirm out of it.
Because this is America and if you make rules like that you’ll crush the American Dream ^tm^ and no one will want to work at all because you’ve taken away their ability to daydream about one day being the disgustingly rich person doing the trickling instead of the disgustingly poor person waiting to be trickled on.
Haha what the fuck do you think we’re talking about here? Nobody said lower CEO pay or anything about a ceiling, we’re talking about lessening the pay gap by enforcing a ratio. If CEOs want to make huge wages they need to pay employees more. This is grade school math dude.
Obviously you’re trolling and I’m just feeding it, but on the small chance that you’re not… Well shit man, maybe don’t dig yourself into stances so strongly if you can’t do basic math?
Dude scroll up. Unless buddy edited the post, this entire response thread was a reply calling for reducing ceo pay to fix the ratio. Which I maintain, despite all the name calling, doesn’t fucking help anything at all
No, it wasn’t. You did a dumb, you doubled down swinging, and now you’re trying to point the finger and lash out at everyone else out of embarrassment. Have some humility and own it or delete your comments in shame lol.
I'm ok with this, but it's essentially just a step toward socialism which is the better option (but will never happen). Because all this will do is make CEOs less wealthy from the company itself. The investors still make tons more than the CEOs already and they don't do anything. You need to force revenue sharing essentially which is just socialism with extra steps. Cause CEOs will just end up investing in other companies and still be wealthy and get less compensation from the company itself.
I know. But investors don't care. They're the root of the problem. CEOs are simply an employee of the company that ultimately represents the shareholders interest. Affecting their pay does not affect shareholder value that much. It just commoditizes the CEO position.
Seriously, I literally just posted the same comment basically. It’s really silly how fixated on CEOs people are. I guess they are an easy scapegoat example, but they’re just goons hired by the board of directors on behalf of the shareholders. It’s not like they straight up own the company. (Yeah yeah yeah, there’s stock compensation, and some founder CEOs like Zuck still own shares after IPO etc, i know.)
Socialism is the abolition of social classes. Regulating capital is usually called Social Democracy, or Marxism. Honestly, sieze the means of production.
No, for investors to grow revenue it would. Which was the whole initial concept of owning the means of production. You invest in what you thought would make money. You didn't invest because you wanted to take away employee's earned value to yourself. But that's what it came to. A majority of inflation is profit-driven related. Not government assistance related like many corporations and conservatives want you to think. Aside from that, any overt success is shared amongst everyone and no increase would be offset by normal COLA through the supply chain. People could survive and thrive without having to gut the value of employees or those in the supply chain. The only issue would be loss of business which is always a risk. But losses can be shared equally or if it's a large enough loss over a long enough time, it would require some folks to be laid off and depending on why, the employees could put the person running the business.
You didn’t invest because you wanted to take away employee’s earned value to yourself.
The fact that this ends up being the way that companies create more ‘shareholder value’ is a particular disease of modern neoliberalism. What you describe seems to me more similar to how companies in the US were run in the 1950s. More of a ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ approach that was used before management became antagonistic towards labor (viewing business units as ‘cost centers’ etc…). Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.
Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.
It’s enshrined in a management culture that has largely conquered labor through a mixture of anti-union measures and taking capitalism global so that they can pay as close to zero as possible for labor in other countries.
Sure, the products and services (and the country) all suffer, but nobody really seems to give a shit about that.
Exactly. Increasing pay would be really, really nice. But we can do that and have more control over our workplaces. Worker owned companies would prevent huge disparities in pay from reoccurring, regardless of what the government does.
Like a wise and angry man once said: "Fuck the G rides, I want the machines that are making them."
The point is that if max pay gap laws are passed, CEOs will just hide their actual pay in external resources and normal employees will still make exactly the same.
Good. Make them hide it. Then make it illegal to hide income(if it already isn’t). Tax agencies like the IRS are really good at catching this sort of thing.
Make it difficult for them and their companies.
Make them have to spend to hide it. If they get caught, the money goes back to the economy. If they don’t get caught, at least some the money they spend on law firms and accounts goes back to the economy.
37% federal plus 5-10% state, plus additional Medicare tax and 3.8% investment income tax and a bunch of others, not good enough for you? That’s literally approaching 50% what’s your problem?
That’s literally exactly what I’m advocating for word for word. Wealth tax bad, income tax good. Income tax rate too low? Crank it up to your hearts content. Glad we agree.
A majority of wealth doesn't come from income so would never be touched by income tax. A "wealth tax" is just a broad term meaning that they should be taxed on the wealth fairly. Like capital gains for instance is a doozy. Way less taxation than what you likely pay (percentage wise obviously).
So "wealth tax" would include an income tax, capital tax, estate tax etc, all just at rates that are equivalent to how well the system treats them. They get a much larger advantage off the system that is set up than most others.
And the ultra wealthy don't even always have an income. You think Bezos has a salary right now that's significantly attributing to his wealth? Or Buffet or even Zuckerberg? I forget, his his salary still $1 a year? You want to tax only that?
But they're literally not counted under income tax law. So you're essentially arguing for the exact same thing if you want it to count under some sort of tax.
Edit: short term capital gains is the only one that counts as income. Long term is not and is severely under taxed compared to income tax. Like, I like your intentions, but you're severely fucking up the details and it details your entire motivation and intentions.
When your comment backed me up, I didn't find any reason to respond. Capital gains tax isn't income tax. You admitted it by typing it out. You're just showing that "wealth tax" is just a tax on various means of wealth. I don't know if English isn't your first language, but you're literally agreeing with everyone but saying you don't.
No one owes you anything, nor do they owe you a response. Especially when it didn't back up your own point.
Thanks for typing out a lot of words to say "you want taxes other than income."
You never even offered a rebuttal to what I said. You're a fucking joke.
Don't talk to me again. You're so unhinged you came back 6 days because someone decided you weren't worth the fucking time to respond to due to your shitty ass logic and poor understanding of language. So again, capital gains tax is not income tax. You agree. Thanks. You understand that "wealth tax" is just a broad term that means taxes on things other than their income (which in many cases is $1, such as Zuckerberg).
You're not a CPA. If you are? I feel bad for your clients as they're gonna get fucked in audits.
That's only short term capital gains tax. Long term capital gains is taxed at a different rate than short term. I literally already mentioned that.
Edit: to be clear, Schedule D would include sales of assets that aren't required to be reported on 1040. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi you can follow the instructions there and specifically where it tells you how to choose different tax rates than, you know, the income tax rate.
Double edit: and id still argue you want the same as everyone. Changing the income tax rate wouldn't do anything. You have to understand that by this point. You'd need to account for things like capital gains tax and what not. Wealth tax is simply asking for higher tax rates on things like income or capital gains, etc. If you're a CPA, you have to know that if you're going to limit what can be taxed to simply and only the income tax rate, it's easy to hide income in things that are taxed differently. Things like foreign assets, etc. Again. "wealth tax" is not antithetical to what you want. But your claim (which you explicitly gave an income tax rate as your example for income tax) that everything goes through that income tax rate is absolutely false. I think you're just getting confused because these values get combined on one form in the end. But there's a reason there's a Schedule D. Because it's more complicated than just being subject to income tax.
All capital gains and losses foot on schedule D line 16 and flows into 1040 line 7. The worksheet below breaks out items treated differently like section 1250 recapture, qualified dividends and LTCG:
It’s all income, just different tax rates and rules.If you want higher LTCG tax rates sure, crank it up I don’t care.
Wealth tax is NOT simply asking for higher tax rates.
Wealth tax typically includes unrealized capital gains. All unrealized gains eventually become realized one way or another. At that point LTCG tax or estate tax applies.
Taxing unrealized capital gains is a terrible idea. Wealth tax is a terrible idea. Income tax is just fine. Income tax includes realized capital gains. Crank that rate up if you want. Just no wealth tax. These are completely separate concepts.
the fact you even had to say "typically" means its a broad term that just means different things to different people. if someone wanted to tax unrealized gains specifically, they would say that. they didn't. they're essentially just saying they want wealthy people to pay taxes.
this has been repeatedly told to you. you even used a specific rate to describe income tax as being enough. that alone would have excluded your whole, now further expanded upon but originally excluded by definition, explanation.
this was also extremely clear from everything i said. multiple times. but obviously, like i said, multiple times, you're in agreement with me. you just have some hangup on the definition of an ambiguous word that the original user gave no further intent behind and just jumped to your own conclusions on nothing, despite being told, repeatedly.
do you understand now?
I'm done here. I can't believe you're arguing with someone who has repeated been on the same page as you. Nothing you've said is in disagreement with me (except my claim you're not a CPA). Its like you just want to hear yourself talk or "win" something. Especially after that childish rant about someone not responding to you on the internet. Honestly. You should be ashamed of that. I don't get it. Do you want the last word or not? It's behavior like that which makes me believe you aren't a CPA because you're not acting like a goddamn fucking adult.
So you don't get all stressed out or angry or need an extra call to your therapist, i'm not going to respond again, but I might downvote you just for fun. And honestly, why is an upvote without a comment ok but a downvote without a comment isn't? Someone can disagree with you and leave it at that. They don't owe you anything, you entitled ass.
The problem is that once you are super rich you don’t really have an income anymore. You just expand your wealth and you end up paying way less taxes on that.
This is something that the common mortal can’t even think of.
The upper-class does not rely on income the same way the middle and lower class do. Taxing income affects us much more than it does them, that’s why you institute a wealth tax to spread the burden.
You simply don’t understand. All income flows into wealth. All wealth is eventually becomes, one way or another, taxable income. You can defer it for a while but it’s literally all the same thing.
You’re talking about legislating a massive clusterfuck, like you can’t even imagine how messy it would be, that pretty much nobody would comply with free of errors and omissions, all over a timing difference.
Just please, I’m fucking begging you, stop talking about a wealth tax, especially when you don’t understand how tax works to begin with.
But they bring so much value for that $601. Like figuring out how many people to fire to maximize revenue for shareholders. Come on, doesn’t that deserve a $15 million salary?!
It’s ironic, they’re the one position that I think at most companies provides no value at all. They think they’ll be the ruling class in an apocalypse, but they don’t realize that they have no marketable skills whatsoever.
Yes and no. They can’t do what everyone else can do and not many can do what they do. You only see the darker side of thing and yes most are incredibly evil in many ways.
However, someone has to organize. Someone has to delegate. Someone has to decide. Do they deserve that much money? No. Does the position need to exist? In many ways it seems so.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they don’t have a unique skillset. You’re right that someone does need to delegate, organize, and decide, but the ability to do so isn’t special at all. You could probably put any given technical worker in that position and they’d do just fine too.
Experience of course is what really shines here, but the problem is the same as politics. They may have more experience, but the decisions they’re making aren’t for everyone’s best interest. They’re biased towards the newer, richer friends.
This experience vs corruption duality is tough. It’s also there when you have the government making policy. The experts you want to consult on how X is made and what regulations there need to be are those who are experiences in making X – but those same groups also want money and clout, and will try to get that into the regulations. I’m not sure what a good solution is.
Feels like this is actually a way to make it seem like less of a gap? Hourly workers (the workers discussed here for the most part) think of wages in, you guessed it… hours. To keep it clear, tell them, “You make $10 an hour, but your CEO makes $6,000 an hour.”
Or even better, “Your CEO makes more in a single day than you do in an entire year of full time work - Almost double what you make in a year in fact. And that day your CEO ‘works’ is a fairly relaxing day with a long lunch break, a private office and air conditioning,”
So what dollar amount is acceptable between the person whose responsibility is a broom and the person that has hundreds of people’s livelihoods at stake and dozens of stores to maintain?
Well I could do that job, too. But I won’t be allowed. Because I couldn’t go to the right school. Because I wasn’t born to rich parents. Because I’m working class, and they are owner class.
I mean that’s just a long list if excuses. It’s that mentality that keeps you back. Our outcomes in life are a direct reflection of our choices. It might take a lot of sacrifice but easy and successful are not synonymous.
I’m trying to point out that these fuckers are a different class above us. They’re filthy rich and they own us, that’s why they get paid hundreds of times more than us - they didn’t earn it. That’s just life.
The owner class doesn’t work the way we do. They go to private school from birth, their grades can be guaranteed or cheated. Their acceptance into schools is often a matter of being a Heritage admission and then paying full price or more for it.
We work for half the opportunities that are handed to them.
Why did you dodge the question and inserted a completely separate scenario. Your scenario is true in some cases, but so is mine. Would you be willing to answer my question now?
Absolutely. You might compare their work, which janitors generally work themselves to the bone and have to deal with filth, while CEOs have to deal with stress. What about retirement? People who work manual labor generally destroy their bodies and have terrible quality of life after retirement or just in later years in general, CEOs get to walk away with their health. Work is work. If they put in equal effort they should make an equal wage.
So when a company decides to compensate employees, your belief is that the janitor who has minimal responsibilities and training for that job provides the same value as the one who had to earn a degree for the position, is actively trying to expand the company, which has an added benefit of hiring new employees, among many other factors?
Here’s a real world example. I train people to do the job and meet the standards I require for my company. They start out with no or minimal skills, I provide the knowledge so they can do the work. Should I not be compensated more than them even though I’ve invested my time and money in them? Should they not be compensated more than the brand new hire even though they have more skills and seniority? Or do we all make the same since we all ‘give it our all’?
They all just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become CEOs. Doesn’t anyone want to work anymore? When I became a CEO I had to walk up hill both ways and put in 2,000 hours a week. Just kidding, I got a loan from daddy. /s
If the CEO is making that much wait’ll you find out how much the shareholders are making off those employees!
It makes for a decent example I guess, but it’s really silly how fixated on CEOs Joe Public is. They’re hired by the board of directors, who are elected by the shareholders. It’s not like the CEO straight up owns the company (usually).
if you’ve ever worked food service in your life you should instantly be able to calculate how fucked wages are. in 1 hour you make dozens of meals that cost $10+ while getting paid maybe $10 or $15 per hour. it’s obscene
Good sentiment but not really a true conclusion. Most restaurants sell their food for a little over cost. The majority of their sales profits come from the drinks. It’s insane. A 5 gallon bag of Coke syrup is good for $1,000+ in drink sales but costs most businesses less than $100. Regardless, I agree that workers should be paid more, but not because the food is so expensive.
I’m sure this is even less awful than the disparity with Big Lots employees and employers. Store managers make 100k a year, most employees are making less than 15 an hour. Absolutely the worst conditions and employment terms of any retail I’ve ever worked.
Which side of the fence are you putting store managers on? At a minimum that's $48 an hour (or a little over $3 for every $1 by the lower employee), but it's likely worse than that as often store managers work more than 40 hours a week and are not allowed overtime, so their pay doesn't change. Just saying I can't tell based on your wording if you think the gap between managers and employees is a problem, as I guess it's debatable, but definitely nowhere near the numbers above. So just wondering if you could clarify your point a bit.
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