Most CEOs are closer to you and me than to the billionaire class in terms of wealth/wealth growth. And a lot of CEOs are just overpaid MBAs making sure there's a steady stream of money to the owner class, not owners of companies.
Conversely, all billionaires could get 0 salary and would still make more in a minute than you do in a lifetime, purely by appreciation of their assets/stock. Not that we shouldn't do it through progressive taxes, but nothing will change for the better if all you do is limit CEO pay, in terms of equality.
A 401k is a target date fund that is a mix of hundreds or thousands of companies. It is hardly comparable to the stock proportions that actual investors are playing with; and does not have the power of "buy, borrow, die" that the capitalist class enjoys to avoid taxation for generations of wealth.
A 401k a worker drops a couple hundred bucks into after each paycheck is hardly "the snake eating itself". It's a glorified savings account that makes stupid people feel like their interest align with those with actual capital. A 401k account is quickly becoming a means of the capitalist class gambling with your retirement savings account.
These funds are all based off of money managers investing in set stocks with the intention for those stocks to impress with a good ROI.
If I use the CPP as an example, decades ago all Canadians, through the CPP, bought a sizeable stake in Skype to then sell it years later for an immense profit. Do I individually have money I can put on the stock market to a sizeable amount? No.
But if you are using an RRSP through a bank, as an example, you are leveraging the purchasing power of the bank including all the other people putting money into the same product you did.
Economies of scale. 1 person may not make a dent but 3k people invested in the same RRSP? Yes. That RRSP may be in tech stocks or infrastructure or energy based on the product you purchased but rest assured as an individual you want "line goes up".
You need to buy a few more shares for that to be reality. Consumer shares are not controlling shares and we "poors" will never have any controlling anything when it comes to capital.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. That was soooooo funny. Its almost like you think you have some sort of collective economic power in the stock market being a proletariat. The only power you have is one of class consciousness, and you seem to have none.
If you don't have shareholder voting privileges, you are not meaningfully in control of anything in the situation. OP said:
Many of us through our 401k are the shareholders demanding returns.
But if you're invested in a 401(k) you're not a shareholder, and you're not demanding returns at a shareholder vote as part of actual company governance. You are not owed specific fiduciary duties by the officers of the companies in question because you are not a shareholder. You're just a person who invested in a 401(k). These words have hard and fast meanings.
If the RRSP product I have put my money in does not match my expectations I change it, coupled with the fact that the company providing that product will have a harder time to sell said product.
We, as consumers demand "line go up". So yes, we are meaningfully in control unless you are an extremely passive or captive investor which I am unaware is possible. My RRSP is with Scotia they have multiple products I can choose from and I can move to any other bank at no cost. My pension is with Manulife and they have multiple products I can move my investments between at no cost.
So, I'm here for the sentiment of calling out bloated executive pay compared to average worker... but a pie chart like this is the worst way to show this.
A pie chart shows percentages of the whole of something, and there are many other people getting paid than just the CEO and one worker. If your pie chart just represented all of a company's labor budget broken down to the individual, it would have both the average worker's and the CEO's slices be far far smaller.
As an example, we'll keep it as the average worker making 1/360th the pay of the CEO but the company employs 5000 people, then the average worker is making a bit under 0.02% (1/5360th) of the pie and the CEO would be a bit over 6.7% (360/5360th) of the pie. It is still massively bigger. But the CEO is not making nearly the entire labor budget alone like this pie chart makes it seem.
Also, just being nitpicky, the pie chart is wrong even for what it was trying to show. If the CEO's pay is 360 times the average employee then the average employee makes 1/361th of the pice chart as presented leaving the CEO the other 360/361ths. This pie chart shows a CEO making 359 times the average worker.
An employee does a bunch of work and keeps the company running. Without them, the whole thing comes to a halt.
CEOs are generally less than useless, often causing lasting damage to their own comany and to other people in the pursuit of making number go up just long enough to cash out. The only reason they get away with it is really just weak consumers and bribing their government.
No, at the end of the day, the two people sit down to a company-bought meal. The employee gets 1/360th of the pizza and the CEO gets everything else. They can’t eat it all, but they still take it anyway. It’s not about percentages of company money as a whole, it’s about how in the fuck people can think the CEO deserves 359/360ths of a pizza for doing fuck-all but the people doing the real work need to be happy with a piece of paper identifying as a slice of three-cheese.
What part of my comment do you think implied I was supporting the bloated CEO-to-worker pay ratio, that I was minimizing the impact of workers or claiming CEOs are vitally important to the company's operations?
Oh no they resign?! Get real. And the rate at which employees are punished for doing pretty much anything while the laws do not protect them is near criminal enough. In the US, being jobless is a legitimate threat on your health and safety but in many places you can be fired just for the hell of it. Even if you have a good reason, there are a myirad of ways they will attempt to supress you.
CEOs don’t got to jail for hurting working people, they go to jail for pissing off other rich people.
No one would miss the top net worth CEOs (I carefully avoided the word "earning", because we all know they do nothing to earn the pay) if they disappeared right now. Except we might notice how much better everything quickly became.
Hmm, what is good Capitalist sounding propaganda...how about "But what you don't see in this image, is that the pizza is actually as big as a bus, and the worker's slice the size of a wheel".
Capitalism's Praetorian Guard. Every company has this disparity to some extent: pay a handful more, gjve them medals and status in order to control the mass who are forced to work for a pittance.
Past time (two words): Refers to something that is overdue or should have happened already (e.g., “It’s past time to leave”) or a general time in the past.
Pass time (verb phrase): To spend time doing something, usually to occupy yourself or make time go by faster (e.g., “I read a book to pass time”)
No company that consists of a single employee and a CEO has an income ratio of 360:1. I agree that the current ratio is immoral, but the meme is nonsense.
Yes, in order to make this fully accurate, you need a picture of the 1° slice and another of the 360° slice, but in the grand scheme, it doesn't matter if the CEO is getting 359 or 360 times your wage, the issue remains the same
67 replies
And the slice is cold because it's just one degree
Nice
If they make 360 times as much as the worker, then shouldn't the picture show 1/361th of a pizza versus the other 360/361th?
That's not the intent of the picture. The intent is to show how bug of a difference 360x is.
If it wanted to show how much of the metaphorical pizza a CEO takes, you would need to multiply that 360 by the amount of workers.
Yeah but it doesn't. It shows how much of a difference 359x is. It compares 1/360 with 359/360.
That's one use case of the pizza diagram yes.
But if you compare the 1/360th slice of pizza to the whole pizza, you are getting a 360x comparison.
What you are doing is compare 1/360th of pizza to 359/360 of pizza. But pizza diagrams have many viewpoints.
Wealth inequality > income inequality.
Most CEOs are closer to you and me than to the billionaire class in terms of wealth/wealth growth. And a lot of CEOs are just overpaid MBAs making sure there's a steady stream of money to the owner class, not owners of companies.
Conversely, all billionaires could get 0 salary and would still make more in a minute than you do in a lifetime, purely by appreciation of their assets/stock. Not that we shouldn't do it through progressive taxes, but nothing will change for the better if all you do is limit CEO pay, in terms of equality.
Just need infinite pizza and my slice will be big enough!
I wonder how the pizza would look like if shareholders part was also added.
A lot of those workers are also shareholders if you include things like a 401k.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
You'll be down voted but it's been my argument for years and really highlights how badly broken the system is.
Many of us through our 401k are the shareholders demanding returns. We are all the snake eating itself.
This is why we import cheap crap from China. It's why we expect cheap fast food. Cost must always go down. Price must always go up.
A 401k is a target date fund that is a mix of hundreds or thousands of companies. It is hardly comparable to the stock proportions that actual investors are playing with; and does not have the power of "buy, borrow, die" that the capitalist class enjoys to avoid taxation for generations of wealth.
A 401k a worker drops a couple hundred bucks into after each paycheck is hardly "the snake eating itself". It's a glorified savings account that makes stupid people feel like their interest align with those with actual capital. A 401k account is quickly becoming a means of the capitalist class gambling with your retirement savings account.
These funds are all based off of money managers investing in set stocks with the intention for those stocks to impress with a good ROI.
If I use the CPP as an example, decades ago all Canadians, through the CPP, bought a sizeable stake in Skype to then sell it years later for an immense profit. Do I individually have money I can put on the stock market to a sizeable amount? No.
But if you are using an RRSP through a bank, as an example, you are leveraging the purchasing power of the bank including all the other people putting money into the same product you did.
Economies of scale. 1 person may not make a dent but 3k people invested in the same RRSP? Yes. That RRSP may be in tech stocks or infrastructure or energy based on the product you purchased but rest assured as an individual you want "line goes up".
So yes, we are the snake eating the tail.
You need to buy a few more shares for that to be reality. Consumer shares are not controlling shares and we "poors" will never have any controlling anything when it comes to capital.
Do you understand the volume of us "poors" when it comes to our collective purchasing power? We are indeed part of the problem.
Edit to add I am not talking about end consumer purchasing. I'm talking about large block institutional purchasing done on our behalf.
In Canada that can be through my RPP, my RRSP or the CPP or any other pension that may be available through my work.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. That was soooooo funny. Its almost like you think you have some sort of collective economic power in the stock market being a proletariat. The only power you have is one of class consciousness, and you seem to have none.
With all sincerity you are a fucking moron. Educate yourself first, then we can talk.
Im sure boot every day is great. It must be hard on your guts though?
So do you have shareholder voting privileges?
Does it matter? If you've invested in something do you not want "line goes up"?
If you don't have shareholder voting privileges, you are not meaningfully in control of anything in the situation. OP said:
But if you're invested in a 401(k) you're not a shareholder, and you're not demanding returns at a shareholder vote as part of actual company governance. You are not owed specific fiduciary duties by the officers of the companies in question because you are not a shareholder. You're just a person who invested in a 401(k). These words have hard and fast meanings.
If the RRSP product I have put my money in does not match my expectations I change it, coupled with the fact that the company providing that product will have a harder time to sell said product.
We, as consumers demand "line go up". So yes, we are meaningfully in control unless you are an extremely passive or captive investor which I am unaware is possible. My RRSP is with Scotia they have multiple products I can choose from and I can move to any other bank at no cost. My pension is with Manulife and they have multiple products I can move my investments between at no cost.
I'm just buying fucking forest land, and an empty lot to build a bare minimum shack on.
I will live in an outhouse like shrek, and be happy about it.
A 401(k) is a magical process wherein one person invests in the stock market, but another person retains their shareholder voting privileges.
So, I'm here for the sentiment of calling out bloated executive pay compared to average worker... but a pie chart like this is the worst way to show this.
A pie chart shows percentages of the whole of something, and there are many other people getting paid than just the CEO and one worker. If your pie chart just represented all of a company's labor budget broken down to the individual, it would have both the average worker's and the CEO's slices be far far smaller.
As an example, we'll keep it as the average worker making 1/360th the pay of the CEO but the company employs 5000 people, then the average worker is making a bit under 0.02% (1/5360th) of the pie and the CEO would be a bit over 6.7% (360/5360th) of the pie. It is still massively bigger. But the CEO is not making nearly the entire labor budget alone like this pie chart makes it seem.
Also, just being nitpicky, the pie chart is wrong even for what it was trying to show. If the CEO's pay is 360 times the average employee then the average employee makes 1/361th of the pice chart as presented leaving the CEO the other 360/361ths. This pie chart shows a CEO making 359 times the average worker.
What? It‘s a fuckin’ pizza, my dude.
An employee does a bunch of work and keeps the company running. Without them, the whole thing comes to a halt.
CEOs are generally less than useless, often causing lasting damage to their own comany and to other people in the pursuit of making number go up just long enough to cash out. The only reason they get away with it is really just weak consumers and bribing their government.
No, at the end of the day, the two people sit down to a company-bought meal. The employee gets 1/360th of the pizza and the CEO gets everything else. They can’t eat it all, but they still take it anyway. It’s not about percentages of company money as a whole, it’s about how in the fuck people can think the CEO deserves 359/360ths of a pizza for doing fuck-all but the people doing the real work need to be happy with a piece of paper identifying as a slice of three-cheese.
What part of my comment do you think implied I was supporting the bloated CEO-to-worker pay ratio, that I was minimizing the impact of workers or claiming CEOs are vitally important to the company's operations?
No part, which is why I didn’t say that you were. I was explaining why the image is still useful.
Pie chart is the wrong type, it should be a bar chart
And then some doofus would say that it should be all salary employee against the CEO salary.
Using a pie chart is only useful if there is only 1 employee, if there's 360 employees the CEO would get 180/360 and everyone else gets .5/360
Pie chart is a deceptive way of conveying this information
Hey bud, you already basically said that before. Keep re-reading my comment until you understand.
CEO's occasionally go to jail for fraud, have connections and resign fairly regularly. The average employee doesn't.
Oh no they resign?! Get real. And the rate at which employees are punished for doing pretty much anything while the laws do not protect them is near criminal enough. In the US, being jobless is a legitimate threat on your health and safety but in many places you can be fired just for the hell of it. Even if you have a good reason, there are a myirad of ways they will attempt to supress you.
CEOs don’t got to jail for hurting working people, they go to jail for pissing off other rich people.
No one would miss the top net worth CEOs (I carefully avoided the word "earning", because we all know they do nothing to earn the pay) if they disappeared right now. Except we might notice how much better everything quickly became.
Lets be real, the shareholders controlling these corporations would just hire another monkey to do their bidding.
Honestly I'm surprised it's that low.
I know most CEO's aren't the megarich you here in the headlines - they "only" make $500k-$1mil.
But the average to work out to 360x is surprisingly low to me.
Hmm, what is good Capitalist sounding propaganda...how about "But what you don't see in this image, is that the pizza is actually as big as a bus, and the worker's slice the size of a wheel".
Mmm pizza
See that thin line under the pizza? That’s all you’re getting.
Time to get hangry again.
That's my secret. I'm always hangry.
But what about Poor Tiny Tim? He ain’t got no legs to work.
RAGRETS?!?
Seize the means of (pizza) production!
I'm okay with pizza without parentheses, if read "we can now have pizza on our own, just do the work needed to make it"
...
was okay. they're gonna scorch the planet if left alive, right?
Capitalism's Praetorian Guard. Every company has this disparity to some extent: pay a handful more, gjve them medals and status in order to control the mass who are forced to work for a pittance.
Omg just like the Charli XCX song
Pass time is the phrase you were looking for.
Past time (two words): Refers to something that is overdue or should have happened already (e.g., “It’s past time to leave”) or a general time in the past.
Pass time (verb phrase): To spend time doing something, usually to occupy yourself or make time go by faster (e.g., “I read a book to pass time”)
No company that consists of a single employee and a CEO has an income ratio of 360:1. I agree that the current ratio is immoral, but the meme is nonsense.
https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay/
https://www.ibtimes.com/ceos-make-400-times-more-pay-typical-worker-they-lay-workers-off-3659680
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/27/ceo-worker-pay-ratio-us-analysis
https://www.ceotodaymagazine.com/2025/10/americas-toxic-pay-divide-how-ceos-got-632-times-richer-while-workers-fell-behind/
https://aflcio.org/paywatch
Fixed it for you
Only when you insist on applying nonsense hypotheticals such as yours and then pretending that they're the norm.
Of course companies exist with only one employee and another owner-employee. Trades would be best example or small shops, cafes.
That's not the same thing, though.
A CEO is part of specific corporate structure that's incompatible with 2-person companies.
Yeah you're correct. If you don't have a board you don't have a CEO.
It's only nonsense because pizza implies pie chart which implies a sum to 100%.
Good example of How to Lie With Statistics.
Well it works in this case, as you take 1° of the 360° circle, so the ratio works for a pie chart
Nope. If you remove a 1 degree slice, you're left with a 359 degree slice.
Yes, in order to make this fully accurate, you need a picture of the 1° slice and another of the 360° slice, but in the grand scheme, it doesn't matter if the CEO is getting 359 or 360 times your wage, the issue remains the same
A 0.99° slice, while symbolically even more miserable, is effectively indistinguishable from a 1° slice.