Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for July 10, 2024

I was hoping that this strip was collaborating with another one, like it used to do, but today’s “Mutts” has nothing to do with this. Durn.

For me it’s hitting Speed Bump

It’s hitting the top of my screen. Jeez, Rat, you owe me a new PC.

But if those CEOs didn’t get all that money, who would keep the Left in power?

I just saw the fact that the top 1% owns as much as the bottom 90%! How is that even possible???

It’s gotta trickle down from somewhere

So, Rat, what do you suggest in your infinite wisdumb?

We used to have a middle class.

Isn’t the current ratio off by a factor of ten?

I keep asking and never get an answer:

Exactly what is the correct ratio of CEO to “typical worker” pay that would satisfy the Left?

Paper training Mooch.

In 1965 some of them paid taxes as well.

It’s greed, Rat!

Nope, Pearls is at the top.

This is what woke up Coach John in “Big Nate”

That’s how capitalism is works Rat. They is mooches on your incomes.

I would have rather seen his drawing of a totem pole

Some might rank this an F minus.

Which is why corporate taxes need to be based on that discrepancy

The politicians regulating the Free Market are paid by those using the Free Market to make sure it isn’t a Free Market, but instead that it’s a Corporate Market regulated by greed.

This is sadly all too true. But the right has been working to get to this point for a long time.

And they don’t pay their fair share of taxes, either.

People in congress, most repubba and a good number of corporate democrats have ensured that the elitist 1%ers who own all the conglomerates will continue to amass power as the gap between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat continues to widen. The major players have bought out enough of congress to make sure that the elite rich never pay their fair share of taxes and that they can continue to exploit the working class.

There are politicians who care and are for the working man but they really do not have the votes to get their agenda started. Just for example, Bernie Sanders tried to float a bill through the senate which would have established a $15/hour national minimum wage. It only garnered about 40 votes with quite a few corporate democrats and all the right wing repubbas voting it down.. Last year he tried to get a $17/hour bill off the ground but in the senate there is so much opposition…. My advice, vote not simply blue but progressive, support your unions, boycott companies which are known to exploit their workers (Hobby Lobby, Chick-Fil-A, Amazon, WalMart, among others….).

It’s getting so you can’t even afford a guillotine.

I wonder where Mr. Pastis falls on that bar graph

Some came zooming in like ducks on junebugs with their “the left.. blah” locked and loaded. “The Left.” Cute. You’re so cute with your little labels and beer and guns. And you’ve got a Cheeto-powdered Wannabe Fuhrer ready to mobilize you into action. Very superior, of course, to .. (trumpets, drumroll) THE LEFT.

and the graph will soon be up to Toy Story – to infinity and beyond! and yet prices keep going up… OH… Now get it!

Obviously, they need a tax cut.

And the CEO’s job is to find new ways to take more from those struggling to feed their families.

If CEOs make all the money, the economy will spontaneously combust and that dough will be completely worthless.

Each committee that determines CEO pay wants to pay better than the average for their “peer group” of companies. So the CEO pay ratchets up since everyone paying above the average means the average goes up; rinse, repeat. Congress tried to limit this by capping the salary. Companies got around this by giving salary and then bonus non-monetary compensation (i.e. stock options) that were way over that cap. We can voice our objection by buying some stock in the company and at the annual meeting, vote our proxies AGAINST the vote to approve executive compensation.

When the Biden crime family makes tens of million off of influence peddling which rips off all Americans, you are unusually quiet.

Somebody got a red bar up the pooter.

The destruction of the Western Middle class.

The uber wealthy are soooo greedy that some are being frozen when they die and setting up special trust funds that will be available to them when they can be unfrozen. Heard about this on the radio yesterday

Please just leave me alone in my own living room. Just let me have my toaster, & my color TV, and my steel belted radials, and I’ll be happy, oh, and please pass the grey poupon.

I am the CEO of a small business slightly past startup. Last year, my average employee made 268 times what I did.

This year, though, my theoretical income might get all the way into four figures, which would shift it more towards 1965 levels (still in the employees’ favor).

Sorry, Dude: most corporate money goes to Right. Stop watching *FRN and you’d be more informed.

*FRN: Fox Republican News

You can use that same bar graph to compare what the average American makes to what the poor make in other countries. Yet, the only thing Americans want to do is complain about how badly they have it and how it is the other party’s fault. Go visit a 3rd world country and then tell me how badly you have. Count your blessings people!

And they’ll make even more when all the workers are replaced by robots running on AI

But if those CEOs didn’t get all that money, who would keep the extreme Right in power? Cash follows friendly legislators.

What I’d like to know is whether the makeup of the compensation has changed. These days, I believe that a lot of CEO compensation is in stock. That’s different than getting straight pay. Was the same true in the 60’s? Are we comparing apples to apples?

Back in 1965, there were a lot more small companies competing for almost everything. And they actually made things, too.

Prove this is a problem.

If you are happy with your life, what difference does it make to you how much money someone else makes? If you are unhappy, is that any fault of the guy who makes a ton more than you?

Wonderful! So much potential for growth! ;)

A) Still not as bad as the ratio under monarchy, B) Today’s average worker has more wealth.

?

Many CEOs believe they are only beholden to the stockholders, with only their board of directors to report to. To them, if a company is successful, they should reap the lion’s share of the rewards, forgetting they did little compared to their employees to achieve that success. In fact, not many companies actually hold back compensation if a CEO ISN"T successful. And finally, when the CEO is determined to no longer be useful, s/he is let go, usually garnering a huge termination payout. Is it any wonder why employees are cranky?

But in the LA Times, Mutts is below in the column to the right.

Republicans want to use you Social Security money to give the rich bosses tax breaks which you will have to pay for. Republican tax breaks for the rich turned millionaires into billionaires and the middle class into the working poor. Trump added trillions to the debt giving billionaires like himself tax breaks. Republicans steal all the money and give nothing back.

excellent point. I want to be a guy in charge

Uh oh, Rat fell for the propaganda. In actual fact, “average CEO” pay in the US is around $178,000 annually, which is about what the average dentist makes, is nowhere near “344 times as much as the average worker”, and has not risen appreciably faster than average worker pay.

The misleading stats in today’s comic are from a September 21, 2023 “report” by the Economic Policy Institute, a DC-based lobbying group that will spin anything the way you pay them to (e.g. they have taken money from tobacco lobbyists to oppose excise taxes on tobacco).

The main problem with this “report” is that it IS NOT AVERAGE CEO PAY, although the EPI’s press releases are fuzzily written in a way (quote “CEO pay” unquote) to encourage this interpretation, so that’s how a lot of people parrot it. This report ONLY examines “compensation of CEOs at the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. firms”. This isn’t the “average CEO”, these are only the CEOs of the biggest megafirms in the country like Apple and Microsoft and Facebook.

Another problem, and the main reason for the relative “megafirm CEO” increase since 1965, is that the EPI’s “calculations” include all compensation, which for the “top 350” CEOs at the very largest corporations (the only ones the EPI actually count) is strongly muddled by the many who are not only CEOs, but also part owners/founders of the companies they head (such as Bill Gates at Microsoft). The EPI seems to include such earnings in order to intentionally balloon the apparent size of their “CEO pay” results (i.e. including ownership earnings to make it seem that mere CEO salary is outrageous).

Note that in 1965 very few huge companies had been founded and still mostly owned by a few individuals, whereas by 2023 it’s a lot more common (again, think of Bill Gate’s Microsoft, Steve Job’s Apple, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon.com, etc.)

Ask yourself who stands to gain by propagandizing the public against American businesses.

Leaving politics aside, I’m impressed that Rat apologized to Mooch from Mutts. Let’s just all try to get along. Thank you.

For anyone who thinks CEOs are overpaid compared to the value they provide to the company and/or the difficulty of their job, I have a solution for you — go be a CEO and live that high life. Show us how it’s done.

On top of that, with the exception of the iPhone, there has been no innovation since the 60s and 70s.

Now, one thinking it’s due to an increase in Production, or Inflation would be greatly mistaken. Of course, it’s Inbreeding.

What’s good for General Motors is good for the country. These days,that’s Japan

Google “The L Curve”. The website illustrates the problem very well.

Think of it as a year. CEOs get paid for 344 days and the workers get paid for 1. The remaining days are unpaid sick leave.

I wonder whether the “average” is mean, median, mode, or range. They are all averages, but often produce widely different results.

For the benefit of those who didn’t pay attention in 6th grade math, Mean is the total of the numbers divided by how many numbers there are. Median is the number with the same amount of numbers above and below. Mode is the number with the most instances. Range is the difference between the largest and smallest number.

1, 2, 2, 3, 7, 10, 17 = 42. Mean = 6, Median = 3, Mode = 2, Range = 16

So, which is the average?

A small price to pay to make a point.

Sure, CEOs make a ton of money, and are generally worthless.

OTOH, pretty much everyone in the US is way richer in terms of wealth / cost of living than they were when I was a kid in the ’60s and ’70s, and for most of US history for that matter.

We’re having a bit of a downturn lately, but that’s the fault of basically everyone on government, not just a few.

Golly, who set up the structure of corporate governance, anyway?

Hint: The stork doesn’t bring companies their incorporation papers.

320 comments! Talking about a hot button issue.

Envy is an ugly thing

Some politicians (all of them Republican) like to contrast “makers” and “takers.” Well, if you want to see who the takers have been, look at those who’ve got.

It just stabbed Mallard Fillmore right through the heart. Thank you,Rat

Oops.

I’d like to see a similar chart with Trump’s wealth (even though he lies about it) vs. the wealth of who votes for him.