1% of 32 million, i.e. what you would need for the typical worker to not be making less than 1% of the CEO, is $320,000. $320,000 times 170,000 workers is $54.4 billion, i.e. more than three times total revenue (not even including costs other than labor), which would obviously bankrupt the company.
> You can still make everyone's wages better without paying millions to each person and definitely not to the CEO
The point is that the CEO's pay typically scales with the size of the company more than the media wage. Moreover, the latter is set by supply and demand in the labor market, so if you want it to go up you either need less labor or more demand for labor.
Unless you want to get into anti-immigrant and protectionist measures, the first one looks like instituting a UBI or increasing the child tax credit so people are less compelled to take bad jobs for low pay. The second one is "make the economy stronger" (e.g. reduce corruption/waste or lower taxes) and "make the market more competitive" (e.g. make companies smaller so there are more of them and they have to outbid each other for labor and customers, so labor receives the gains as either higher wages or lower prices).
There is no point at which "expect publicly traded for-profit companies to spontaneously become charitable with wages" is a viable strategy, and they do not respond to shame.
> You can still make everyone's wages better without paying millions to each person and definitely not to the CEO
The point is that the CEO's pay typically scales with the size of the company more than the media wage. Moreover, the latter is set by supply and demand in the labor market, so if you want it to go up you either need less labor or more demand for labor.
Unless you want to get into anti-immigrant and protectionist measures, the first one looks like instituting a UBI or increasing the child tax credit so people are less compelled to take bad jobs for low pay. The second one is "make the economy stronger" (e.g. reduce corruption/waste or lower taxes) and "make the market more competitive" (e.g. make companies smaller so there are more of them and they have to outbid each other for labor and customers, so labor receives the gains as either higher wages or lower prices).
There is no point at which "expect publicly traded for-profit companies to spontaneously become charitable with wages" is a viable strategy, and they do not respond to shame.