If you get 300x more money than your best paid employee, this suggests you do the work of 300 of your best paid employees. I really want a CEO show me how exactly they do this ...

Fun fact the modern workforce is now the most educated, most productive and least compensated while companies make record profits

Some of these people make 300+ k a week, a freaking week, and can't pay workers a living wage

In 2008, I was working as an assistant front desk manager for a big large company. The HR manager came and told me I had to take a pay cut cause revenue was way down or I can be laid off and get unemployment. I stayed, took a 20% pay cut (over $200) and worked 10 more hours a week. That same year, the hotel got the coveted five stars and four diamond rating, the GM of the hotel got over a million bonus and a big raise.

this must change.. Corporations have become mini 'empires' where the People at the top get all the money and glory for the work that the ones at the bottom are actually doing for almost nothing. We don't remember the people that built the Pyramids, only the 'Kings' .

These days, CEOs manage with a team of skilled and mostly highly paid executives. They also work with highly paid boards of directors. It doesn't make sense that they would earn significantly more than management below them. Would you pay astronomical dollars to someone who has to have their hand held? To someone who manages a company that doesn't do anything spectacular? A company that has a captured market for years? A company that has static growth?

I compared my salary to my CEO’s salary. Let me say that I made a pretty good salary. I determined that the CEO earned my annual salary in the first 2 1/2 days of the year.

While watching this entire thing I kept missing the part where they mention the point of this video. What is the message? Are CEOs bad? Should we all become CEOs? Is there anything the average joe can do to in any way fight these numbers?

They really need so set a law that stops one employee from making 100000x more than the other employees. Especially when those in management and higher don't do any real work

The issue is that compensating executives with stock options and stock-related benefits causes many executives to have a short-term focus on the stock price. I. E. cutting salaries, keeping wages low and other things are the result. It helps stock value in the short-run (and therefore their compensation) but typically doesn't promote wise long-term decisions.

Switching jobs is the only real way to get any sort of substantial raise. Although it still isn't a sure thing until you find the better job and then get it.

They should interview that CEO that raised the minimum wage to $70k. Sqwak Alley? The company was performing better and he has cut turnover in half. People have more freedom. And he is still wealthy.

Can I dislike this more than once?

So the CNBC make it reporter makes around $85,409.25

Well, this will be interesting. *Grabs popcorn and gets ready to watch the comment section take off

easy way to make the pay gap. quit your job and become a CEO of a startup. if everyone is a CEO then no one is under paid lol.

You forgot “technology and automation”

Nationalize the labor market and slash top earning wages. Just like they did to the workers by capping their pay. Why should they get bonuses? It's a travesty. Send the money to the workers. Get rid of shareholders it's ruining the livelihood of employees.

She makes 85k a year. That's still pretty dang good 😂

don't care when CEO makes billions, but come on, pay your employees livable wage at the least.

AJ looks like a mix of Ellen and Alice from the Brady Bunch

Some CEOs are worth every penny. Some should simply be fired without compensation.

Well how well do you know the board of directors 😂😂😂what a response

All I know about top paid CEOs is that they do lines, hookers and vacation on their personal yachts and they include those times spent as part of their working day.

People are complaining about employee wages and this is just giving me more reason to start your own business. Even if its something small, make yourself your own ceo

So many distractions out there with regards to pay discrepancy. Meanwhile the truly stark and significant contrast is this CEO to worker pay gap.

Wtf is the point of this video?!?!

Who else immediately paused the video to divide 24 million by 281

where's Dan Price when you need him?

Intresting that he mentioned the "trump tax cuts" playing a role in increasing stock prices legitimately (because it increases profits) but forgot the trillions printed and distributed which increased the stock market a lot more artificially (because it does not affect the company itself).

If you want to earn CEO salary, be the CEO. Go apply and become a CEO or start your own business.

The comments are about to be spicy!

Once people realize that inequality is the feature they sill stop complaining about it. The skillset and value of a ceo is obviously exponentially higher than a bank teller or a cashier. People need to focus on themselves and their skillsets to make themselves valuable. If you can be replaced in a day by someone that will do your job for less, then you need to do more.

Great segment!

Worker should get paid more, I have no problem how much Ceo or Queen of england make ok maybe the Queen is a problem cause she don't do anything in her life , if it brother's then become by yourself one , no one stopping u right???

And the Japanese were getting mad at Ghosn for making

This video has a lot of things in it, but does not explain how we can go about fixing it.

The harder you are to replace the more money the market pays you.... most employees are replaceable, good ceos are not. The same logic applies for sports athletes, famous actors,singers etc. Apart from that, government policies of creating "equality" by printing trillions and keeping interest rates low has caused this massive gap due to the stock market being artificially inflated which automatically boosts ceo compensation which consists mostly of stock options!

Yo, that's the yacht from Point Break (2015). Cool!

The pay gap between a CEO and the average worker is NOT what is 'causing anxiety'. 'The anxiety' is not well founded and the questions of genuinely founded anxiety presented are not examples of me looking up to see how much more my CEO makes than me. That isn't what determines if I have food on my table. I thumbs'd up the video though, I like the reports energy and enthusiasm for the work.

Maybe you can start your own company and take all of the risk that business owners take. Unnecessary jealousy

"I'll nEvER MaKe As MuCh As mY CEO!" Not with that attitude....

Take a look at Dan Price. CEO of Gravity Payments. He raised everyone's salary to $70k while also taking a $1000000 pay cut. He didn't do it because the company was struggling. In fact the company has grown since then.

So you think a normal employee should be paid equally as the CEO ? thats a no brainer.

So she make bout 86k a year

In my country we are still working with 2013 salary

This is a parody, right???

CEOs are paid in stocks? 100% vax?

Before piling in the video should split the commentary between start up founder CEO's and mega corp hired CEOs The ones that near killed themselves getting their start up off the ground deserve what they make, just check out the story of Peloton But the career CEOs spat out from the ivy league - I have no sympathy.

Hi, even if more equality is achieved; for example, we are able to increase worker compensation. Wouldn’t that just increase the price of goods and services? Then everything will be relatively expensive.

To be fair, CEO like Elon Musk took $0 as a salary and just have stocks options when the Tesla hits different milestone. Most people just want a paycheck for the hours that they worked. Maybe we can change the compensation structure, and pay employees less wage and give them some equity in their company

You can make as much as your CEO. Start your own business. Remember, you aren't a worker, you are a sole entrepreneur. Your "employer" is simply a customer. Think outside the box.

Hi AJ Hess, It seems like you are making around 85,000/yr from what you have said. That means an average Indian has to work 535 year's to make what you are making. Don't say the living cost is too low in India. Petrol costs $5.5/gal in India. You are of course, in the top 1% of the whole world. The size of the wallet has nothing to do with contentment. Contentment is where true wealth is. Cheers

CEOs are so grossly overpaid they can go 10 years without pay and still be fine, but they choose to cut from the base of the foundation. the hardworking people who kept the gears turning are the ones that gets hurt first when companies get in trouble. when the companies does well, the CEO is the one getting the bonus, not the hardworking ground level employees.

2009. Got laid off. Mom killed herself. My step mom convinced my dad I was just a leech in her eyes. Got a business going started making much more. Then they wanted help. Money is all that matter "mom." Go republican capitalism. She should've made better choices.

"Worker productivity has increased 3.5 times faster than average worker pay since the 1970s." Who is creating this increase in productivity? If workers are creating the increase in productivity, how? Did workers begin working 3.5 times more productively, despite not being paid more? Why would workers do that? If workers are the source of increased productivity, there would have to be some unnoticed innovation that explains that and which many workers began to implement (coincidentally) more or less at the same time. Neither the host nor the guest in the video offer any such explanation. Obviously, the companies which employ the workers created innovations that increased productivity. Companies making workers work harder or work longer hours is also an insufficient explanation for the increase in productivity. Labor is the largest expense companies pay. Every company has a vested interest in reducing its workers' hours of employment. The entire economy is based on labor-saving technology and management approaches. If simply having employees work more hours made a company successful, every company would tell its workers to work the maximum hours possible. Not being responsible for greater productivity gives you absolutely zero claim to the additional value the company creates. Just because you pull a lever that puts the finishing touches on an assembly line product does not mean you should get paid in equal portion to the CEO who ensures the entire process works from start to finish.

I genuinely don't have the drive, to work as much as CEOs too. I don't even want too earn that much, it's too much work.

The math is simple, who is harder to replace the CEO or the employee? Just look at any job board there are countless job openings for various roles within organisations very rarely do you see vacancies for CEO roles very, very rarely.

Why don’t you combine all the workers wages in a year against a CEO? Anybody can flip a burger but what one person can make all the huge decisions for a company ..

Hollywood actors make tens of millions a year. Professional athletes make tens of millions a year. Viral KZfaqrs make millions a year. Comparing your small salary to these high paid people is a pointless thing.

85k $ is not that bad u know

true..but how often do companies get tax cuts? I think dude is being disingenous...CEOs deserve EVERY penny in my opinion

Ask Laurence Mitchell why he makes more than an iron worker that works 100x harder than he does on his laptop.

With automation, companies make more money than they used to with far fewer employees. Somebody gets all of that money, and that somebody is the CEO. For the record, most don’t deserve it and they definitely didn’t earn it. That’s modern capitalism - the rich stealing from everyone else - for you, and the fruits of your labor especially are not immune to it.

How about pro athletes and celebrities making the same with less responsibilities? Should they be paid less too?

The best in the sports world receive outsized compensation. The best in the entertainment world receive outsized compensation. The best in the business world receive outsized compensation.

This is where all the inequality is, not racism.

All CEO’s should be like Dan Price, CEO of gravity payments

AJ looks like a young Sean Penn

So I see a lot of comments here about skills, education, risk, etc and how doing this and that will help you get ahead. That is both true and not true. It’s expensive to be poor and things like lack of education, healthcare, and transportation for poor communities make it harder for economic mobility to occur. So it’s a combination of luck and skill whether you can get to the top or not so please avoid blanket statements. Regardless of your view on economic policy, one thing is clear. Severe economic inequality leads to societal instability and is a challenge to democratic institutions. History has shown us this many times in the form of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, rise of the Nazis, etc, and everything that followed an event of economic inequality resulted in dictators and worse. There is nothing wrong with compensating properly for different skills and level of skill, but at some point if it gets to ridiculous levels for reasons that aren’t even skill based, it’s going to be a problem for all of us. CEOs included.

85k should be enough to pay for a better hairdresser 🤣

Interesting and undeniable fact. The question is how would we design an alternative world such that there's less inequality and we still can maintain productivity growth.

It's rare to find a great journalist who is also entertaining, great piece AJ

Man this video was boring. Which is a shame, because I find AJ to be a great video host

Maybe you could just cap CEO pay as a multiple of the lowest paid worker. If compensation includes stock options then that should be offered as the same multiple to all employees. To be fair, the job of CEO carries far more responsibilities and often a lifetime of dedication and luck to make it to that position. We should all be able to understand why they are paid more, it just needs to be limited as to how much . I personally think politics concerned with wealth inequality should focus more on bleeding down generational wealth that relies on interest to create future wealth. Money is just a means to motivate people to work.

AJ: keep doing reports as tight as this and you’ll soon *BE* the CEO. Cheers and thanks!

1st: am I the only one not understanding this video? 2nd: why is that economist blink so much like he’s lying/holding his tongue?

Why is there a random Yacht clip. Haha

Umm... 9 times out of 10 those CEOs deserve it. Think about this way, who should make more? The cook or janitor of the ship, or the Captain who's responsible for the cook, janitor & everyone else plus the success of ship as a whole??

I think your title is wrong, it should be changed to 1000x as much, not 100.

It should the law that CEOs should get paid minimum wage.

If you reduce compensation to ceo that money will have to spread over 50 k employees so that will mean they get 5 more per an hour. The move is benefits stock options equity tuition child care lunch room free etc😊

Sounds like socialism to me

In the past CEOs did not make as much because it was understood that employees who make more spend more and this is what keeps capitalism alive. I order for capitalism to work for the entire nation or world, people must be able to make enough to spend so the money circulates. If one position holds the majority of the funds in every company then this causes inflation and upset in supply and demand then stimulus and more wlefare program funds to be spent which then more money is printed(aka national debt). Old money is somewhere in a CEOs account not being spent back into the economy. Cash circulation is the life of capitalism and we see today CEO are raking in but all across the world capitalism is dieing. Workers which are also customers are the life force of capitalism. Ceo take pay cuts and putbit back into your employees and conpany or lose everything cause that will happen if this doesnt get fixed soon.

This is the biggest atrocity of our species.

And think; not for profits now have proliferation of C Suites who take up a large portion of the organisation's administration budget. You have companies who have $10m in sales and the CEO earns $250k in Aus.

You can’t be starved into submission. That is how it worked a couple years ago, and it is so obvious, they just casually mention it like everyone knows that technique is an agreed upon tool to use on the working class in America.

That’s because workers are modern-day slaves

CEO’s & Executives don’t get paid on performance because if that’s the case WallStreet & Bankers would’ve never got bailed out in 2008 with ridiculous bonuses for their poor performance and as a failed financial institution!!!

5:22 on the other side ... the workers didn't do anything to increase profits either so the one who takes the greatest risk in the business should get the greatest upside when there is one, why would it be workers who can be replaced at the click of a finger

Unions make it easier to collectively bargain. That’s not a reason why wages are sluggish-if anything it’s why wages have increased.

This is why we need to break out pitchforks

Volume low when max on my phone

Yup that’s America great country no surprises there you work hard and smart

Lol eat the rich

The title is so misleading. They don’t even explain why the CEOs make so much money

The only one who can save Skyrim now is Jarl Marx.

US firms to leave the USA.

We made record profits, pizza party!!

Interesting. Now I know more about why “CEOs make 100x more than their workers.”