CEO's make more in a day than you make in a year

This is conservatives' idea of "fair", folks.

The Freak Rethuglic types are the champions of Potemkin populism. Though they tend to occupy the upper income groups, they complain about the poor having it too easy. They complain about everyone else thinking someone owes them something, when they expect huge tax breaks themselves. They complain that making the rich pay income taxes is "slavery", yet they support requiring residents of public housing to perform unpaid labor.

This virulent Freak Rethuglic brand of conservative - the progeny of the talk radio brand that gained height in the '90s - talks about how they deserve to make many times as much money as the average worker because they've worked so hard to get where they're at. But this plen-T-plaint falls to rack and ruin just by using simple math. There's only 168 hours in a week, which is slightly more than 4 times the average work week, yet still they make far more than 4 times what regular employees make. And you know they've never worked a 168-hour week, because they needed time to sleep and eat.

The situation is borne out by yet another study showing that the gap between executives and average workers is yawning and out of control. The survey by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy says CEO's at major American corporations make as much money in one day as their average employees (not even the lowest-paid ones) earn in a year.

Gee, CEO's must be working a 10,000-hour week to make that much money. Either that or they're looting their own corporations (and stockholders) to award themselves ridiculously high salaries to enjoy their posh offices and hobnob with politicians. We think you can guess it's the latter. Most of these CEO's have always been rich their whole lives, and they just think it's their birthright to be paid as much money as possible while coasting through life. CEO's in the survey made an average of $11,000,000 a year!

While all this is going on, the new minimum wage is still 7% lower than it was only 10 years ago when adjusted for (whoosh...whoosh) inflation. Over this same time frame, pay for CEO's has increased 45%!

The average CEO got perks like housing allowances and travel benefits worth over $400,000 last year. A minimum wage employee needs 36 years just to make what a CEO gets in perks alone in only one year. The 20 highest-paid people at publicly traded corporations made an average of $36,400,000 last year, which is 38 times as much as the 20 highest-paid people in the nonprofit sector and 204 times as much as the 20 highest-paid generals in the American military.

Every couple years or so, a legislator tries to come up with a fix for this growing disparity by proposing a bill to limit CEO's of big corporations to a maximum salary that's only so many times what the company's lowest-paid workers make. But even these bills are generous to CEO's, because the limit is usually in the magnitude of the tens or hundreds - thus, CEO's can still make tens or hundreds of times as much money as their employees. Logically the limit should be more like 4 instead of the hundreds. Not 400. I said 4. And that's being generous too, because what CEO sleeps only 8 hours a week?????

These corporate executives ain't gonna like making only 4 times what their workers make, but hey, if it's 4 times what's good enough for the lowest-paid workers, then why isn't it good enough for CEO's? Talk about a bunch of spoiled babies!

(Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/20493272)