I Have Debts No Honest Man Can Pay
“You share the wealth because you cannot exist without us.”
Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA President, July 13, 2023
The amount of money the head of a company makes versus a worker has increased over the past few decades to dizzying degrees. According to the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit think tank, “the CEO to worker compensation ratio was 21-to-1 in 1965. It peaked at 366-to-1 in 2000. In 2020 the ratio was 351-to-1.” During the pandemic, CEO’s compensation “jumped 18.9% in just one year.”1 while many workers were unemployed. The numbers are wild, CEO compensation is astronomically high while workers’ wages have been stagnant for years.
The rich continue to expand their wealth and their power to no end. Nothing is enough, a sentiment often filed under ambition but I call psychotic. We’ve internalized this insatiable capitalism’s values in our society; hell, it has become our society. If someone is rich, they have earned it. If someone has wealth, it is their just reward, they are smarter and more talented than others. There is an even more deep-seated idea that these people are superior to others with less.
Hot take: People in charge right now don’t have great ideas or are innovators. They are best suited to conduct business on questionably ethical grounds to get the most profit for shareholders. They have no conscience, and no shame to take the money they take while letting people who work for them struggle. What if we’ve been mistaking cruelty for brilliance all along?
The problem with power is that those who want it believe they are immune to its pitfalls. Frank Herbert wrote in “Chapterhouse Dune”: “Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.” Their ego lets them think that their ego will never cloud their judgement, they will always know better, that they are exceptional. Every fucking story in history of a powerful person ends the same way, with their own bloated sense of self being their downfall.
The SAG-AFTRA strike exposes the disparity of money in the entertainment industry, executives making millions of dollars while only 12.7% of union members make enough to qualify for the union’s health insurance. The minimum to qualify is $26,470 a year.2 I’m talking about writers and actors, workers considered to be white collar and skilled, thus worthy of respect for some people.
Monday, July 31st is the deadline for the UPS and Teamsters contract. The Teamsters are looking for better pay for part-time workers (a sticking point for UPS) and improved working conditions, especially considering the intense heat and weather we’ve experienced. Working class people are considered disposable, the goal is to burn through people so those wages stay as low. A common response when any worker’s criticism of their employment is to just “find another job.” Every time you start a new job, you start over—financially, professionally, socially. That’s no small thing, regardless of what people’s pithy responses are.
These labor issues are systemic, indicative of a culture that sees no harm in forcing people to lose their homes3 as long as the CEOs and shareholders don’t lose a dime. Yes, it’s about the money, and yes, it’s about keeping us under their thumb. The contribution of workers is continuously undervalued and disregarded because we are dependent upon this labor.
Where we are now, with so many people in this country barely getting by, is because convenience and consumption has been prioritized to the detriment of the worker. We have no memory of any other way. We can buy and watch anything on our phones, without leaving our homes. We over consume because it’s easy, the fucked-up thing is we’re not necessarily satisfied with all this stuff. If we were, we wouldn’t need so much of it. If the unions win, prices could change, packages could be slower, binge-worthy TV could be less abundant. Change changes things. Keep in mind, the bastards want us to blame the union, not their greed, for these changes. Everything up until this point has been manipulated to provide us with the most convenience to do what we do best in this country…consume.
I’m not saying anything new here. These views also apply to fast fashion and commodity food. We see how important unions are and worker representation. It’s been diminished for a while, like making a good living is selfish. We’re living in the ramifications of deregulations and drunk with power CEOs. It’s up to us to not fall into their hands, to blame the unions for any changes that inconvenience us. Our comfort shouldn’t come at the cost of other people’s livelihoods.
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/
This threshold was increased to the current minimum in August 2020. Previously it was $18,040.
“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it “a cruel but necessary evil.” (Deadline, July 11, 2023)