So America seem to have a misconception about
where we are in terms of inequality and incomes.
Now everybody believes in the American dream, kind of...
…mostly, as you're about to see.
But they don't realize the reality in what's happening.
it wasn't always this unequal, if you go back to 1960s actually, the numbers are
pretty good and in the 1960s for example according to Jordan Weissmann who's
looking at some the studies involved here
the typical corporate chieftain in the US earned twenty times
as much as the average employee.
Now that seems like a big number but I'm comfortable with that
it turns out a lot americans are comfortable with that.
In fact, when they were asked the median American
guessed that executives out earned factory workers roughly 30-to-1.
so actually it's in the nineteen sixties we were doing better than the average
American's expectations in terms of equality between
the CEO's executives and the rest the workers.
Alright, so far so good. Now, when you asked Americans though what should it be
they believe that the ideal ratio would be about
7-to-1. They thought it was 30-to-1
and by the way 3-to-1 is today, they were getting it today, not in the 1960s
right
and I think people are loosely aware that it's with much more unequal than it
was in the sixties.
So they think it's 30-to-1 today
they guessed, they said the ideal would be 7-to-1. So what is it today?
Not in the 1960s – what is it today?
Today, depending on who's estimate you choose
the average CEO makes anywhere from
272 to 354 times
more times as much as the average worker.
So it's not 30-1. It's about 300-1.
Americans think it should be 7-1.
It's 300-1. You have no idea how badly are being rooked.
You're like Mustafa in Austin Powers. You're badly burned!
You're still there but you but you're burned.
And you don't even know it, and in fact, I'm gonna get the
explaining here how much you don't know it. According the AFL-CIO
the average CEO today takes home more than 12 million dollars,
while average worker makes about 34,000 dollars. Isn't that amazing?
Okay, now, remember – CEO's are not necessarily entrepreneurs so some CEO's
where people who started the company the Bill Gates, the Steve Jobs etc, right?
But most CEOs, and the overwhelming majority CEO's
are not the entrepreneur who took great risk and then of course gets a huge payout.
We all understand that, and that's how capitalism works. And I think most Americans
are comfortable with that.
But they're just the guys who run the company
so… and we've shown in
study after study that in fact actually the highest pay CEOs don't do any better
in fact sometimes they do worse than CEO's are paid less.
So this whole idea about "No, you have to pay through the roof so that you've got a CEO
that has your company so much better" is not really true.
So they're getting these disproportionate payouts
when they didn't necessarily start the company – they're a manager.
They're a manager, right? So 20-to-1, 30-to-1 might make sense.
But 300-to-1, 12 million dollars on average. It's unbelievable.
If I owned the company, I wouldn't give a CEO 12 million dollars to run it.
I bet could find a really smart guy for a lot less.
Okay… And by the way if you don't know they rigged the rules, and I'm a tell you
about that a little bit. With the government and within their own
companies. Alright, so we'll get to that in a second. That's the explanation.
So… this is also very interesting: Americans didn't answer the survey much
differently from participants in other countries.
Australians believed that roughly 8-to-1
would be a good ratio between CEO's and the average worker;
French settled on about 7-to-1 and the Germans settled on around 6-to-1.
So we're right at the average of the
developed world – we think it should be 7-to-1, when obviously it's nowhere near that.
Now we have Michael Morton – Harvard Business School professor
who begins to explain this a little bit. And this is fascinating.
It's part of the guys who did study. "Maybe most importantly people from
all walks of life – Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor,
all over the world – have a large degree of consensus
in their ideals: Everyone's ideals are more equal
than the way they think things are.
So… actually
Republicans don't disagree, conservatives don't disagree.
They think that there is great inequality,
even though they're underestimating it by a factor of ten, right?
They think it's 30-to-1, it's in fact 300-to-1.
And they already think 30-to-1 is terrible!
Okay, now here's a fascinating thing where they compare Sweden and the US.
Now remember Sweden – quite socialist,
infact one of the most socialist countries there are.
And they have much better income equality, better distribution of income.
Okay so… Participants were shown three unlabeled pie charts
meant to depict possible wealth distributions: one that was totally equal;
one based on Sweden's income distribution, which is highly egalitarian;
and one based on the US wealth distribution, which is wildly skewed
toward the rich.
They used Swedish income data as a model, rather than wealth
to strike a 'clear contrast' with the United States.
Then, the subjects were told
to pick where they would like to live, assuming they would be randomly assigned
to a spot on the economic ladder.
With their imaginary fate up to chance,
92% of Americans
opted for Sweden's pie chart over the United States.
Okay now think about that. They did not pick the perfectly equal chart, they didn't.
They didn't pick the American chart.
92% – not of Germans, not of Italians, not of anyone else.
92% of Americans picked the chart
for equality that matched
one the most socialist countries in the world.
So that leads to a number of conclusions.
First of all – you're socialist and don't even know it.
You think "Oh yeah we're a free market, alright, yeah!" from all the Republicans in service.
But this just propaganda you been fed. When you ask the specifics
"How would you like society be?" – you pick a very social society.
One that got much better income distribution
and I say better because you said better – you said that's what you want!
92% of Americans said thats that's what they want.
If you want more on the study by the way, go to Slate
and check it out, we'll have the link down below on YouTube.
Because this fascinating to look at. So that's point number one.
Point number two is: why don't you know this? Why are you so off
on your predictions? You generally – as Americans – why do you think is 31 when it
turns out it turns out it's about 300-to-1?
Isn't that weird?
Well, the reality is, generally speaking,
they don't want you to know. Now who's gotten all the advantages in the system?
The CEO's, as we just told you, right? The executives that run the corporations.
What are the major
news outlets that you watch, especially on television?
They are corporations. Do they want you to know
that in fact they're filtering all the money up to the top
and that you have such enormous
income inequality in this country, that if you knew the depth of it,
you might even start a revolution? A political revolution?
They don't want you to know that.
So they'll talk about all this is that'll scare the bejesus outta you
"ISIS! Ebola! Look at all these things!" You're not going to get Ebola,
there's one guy in the country with Ebola and he just came from Africa and he's quaranteed.
You're not gonna get Ebola. That's not the real danger, the real dangers are
that you worked super hard
and they take your money. Here – this is what I mean I'll show you a graph.
This is one the most interesting graphs, because it goes to show you that… look
it seems like well that's kinda benign, right? They're a couple of lines.
But let me show you what's happening here, and why it's so important.
The top line is productivity
and it has consistently gone up all throughout these years,
okay, so throughout all these decades American worker has been
perfectly productive, great job guys! And if you noticed throughout all these
years until about 1980
that your income has gone up with your productivity – that makes sense.
You were productive and you got better income –
great, that's how capitalism is supposed to work,
that's why I'm in favor of capitalism. But around 1980
they changed the rules and what winds up happening is
your median income
starts the flatline. Your productivity's still high
and soaring, but you do not get big gains from that productivity.
That part in the middle there – between productivity and income –
all of that is taken, it seems small on chart, but in real world that is
trillions of dollars of productivity.
And it is filtered up to the top. That's why the CEOs are getting twelve million
dollars a year on average –
that's why they're getting paid up to 350 times what you're getting paid
because they rigged the rules. It's not an accident
It's not like "Well it always happens". No wait – it doesn't happen in Sweden,
it doesn't happen other countries. It hasn't always happened in America.
In America in the 1960s – the Golden Age – conservatives say that the
Golden Age of America, right?
It was like that at all. Why? We had a much higher rate
for the top marginal income bracket. So if you made about –
you know, in today's dollars – millions of dollars, right?
They charged… The tax rate was all the way up to 91% at one point.
But it wasn't 91% of all of your income.
It was the 91% for every dollar above a couple million
dollars in today's dollars.
Okay? So if you made a gargantuan amount of money they said "Okay, look, we're gonna
take that for infrastructure.
So that everybody can be better off, so that we can educate the next
generation of Americans, and they could be just as productive as you were,
and we can grow this economy and that worked.
It worked in the 1950s, it worked in the 1960s
and through the 70s. And then we ran into a brick wall.
For two reasons: the Reagan revolution – they said "No, end of that."
We're cutting taxes on the rich, we're cutting taxes on corporations,
we're shifting the tax burden on the average American.
And we're gonna get rid of regulations. So if the company wants to
say "Hey you know what? We're not really gonna
share the profits that were making with the
our workers and we're not gonna regulate it. Take the money, who cares?"
And all of these different rules they changed, and of course –
other than the Reagan revolution – a major thing that happened was –
in 1976 and 1978 the Supreme Court
had two colossal decisions that said
corporations are human beings, they had decided that earlier, and hence
they have freedom of speech rights. And freedom of speech
means spending money in politics. Corporations can now
spend money buying your politicians and they did.
They bought them in bucket force.
And they captured the American government and rigged the rules in their favor
and instead having a reasonable 20-to-1 ratio between the executives
and the average worker, they made it 300-to-1.
It didn't happen in other countries, it didn't happen in this country
at another time, it happen starting in the 1980s.
Because they fixed the rules to screw you over
and on the behalves of the executives. They rigged the government that way and within
their own companies they said "Oh yeah,
the CEO and management will help pick the board and then the board will
help pick management and the CEOs."
What is that? That's a circle, right? So they all decided "Oh yeah, we're super important.
We all got to get paid a lot of money." By the way, who does that screw over?
Shareholders – not just employees –
but the shareholders, the people who theoretically own the company.
"Sorry, you don't have a lot to rights
you show once a year and maybe we'll allow you to vote."
They rigged the rules so much, that a lot of shareholders
in this country can't even vote… …on what compensation they're gonna give their
executives. Isn't that insane?
It's the owners of the company! That's not capitalism,
that's not how capitalism is supposed to work! Corporations have taken over
the government and what used to be our capitalist system
and they have instituted corporatism. And this system
has melded big business and state together.
And they crush all their competition by rigging
the system in their behalf, they allow for all these gigantic mergers,
they give unnatural advantages to companies
so the smaller companies cannot compete with them.
They shift the tax burden onto you.
And they shift the income onto themselves. That is why we are in the
horribly
inequal state that we are in right now. And if only Americans knew how bad it was,
and why we got to this state, they might
actually do something about it. Now you know our solution,
we think that getting a constitutional amendment to get money
out of politics
is critical. When money swamped into– and especially corporate money, swamped into
politics,
that's when they captured our government. We can get our government back.
Back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s our government worked for us.
Ralph Nader was so strong – can you imagine that world? –
that he got Nixon to pass the EP to start the Environmental Protection Agency!
Nixon!
That's how strong progressives were, because when you're both mattered
they had to actually care what you thought. You don't want your
kids poisoned, you didn't want the
river poisoning you, you didn't want the air poisoned.
They passed [?], they passed seatbelts.
they did all things to protect the American voters!
The citizens! That's the kind of country we used to have
when we were in the top of the world, and that's kinda country we can have
as long as you amend the Constitution to say let's go back to what made America great.
Where we were a democracy, where we have free, and fair elections.
Right now the only people who could run in those elections are millionaires
hand-picked by these executives to maintain this current order.
Well, I don't like this order, I don't think you like this order and according to the studies,
92% of you don't like this order.
You've been had, you've been took.
So I'mma get up and take it back. The way you do it is you go to
wolf-pack.com
That's our website we've already got an army of over 10,000 people.
We've already got to say to say we'll go to a constitutional convention
we're going to get that amendment, no matter what Washington thinks.
We're gonna do it –
join us – be part of that… if we write down into the Constitution…
Every generation of Americans has amended the constitution,
because you're supposed to. You know one of the amendments to the Constitution?
The Bill of Rights. You know what our amendments to the constitution, the 13th, 14th,
and 15th amendments
that freed the slaves. The amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote.
We are suppose to work– all throughout
history, and all the generations of Americans to get a more perfect union.
It's now your turn.
Do you like this system? If you do, you bow your head and you go home,
you sit on your couch and you shut your mouth.
If you don't like the system, you get up and you fight back.
We already have a logical way to do that. We've already gotten California, we've
already got Vermont,
we've already gotten twenty different states to introduce this resolution.
Republicans are actually with us, independents are with us.
It's 92% of the country. By the way in other polls,
"Do you think money is corrupting politics?" 95% say yes.
Of course it is! The only people who say it isn't
are the people in Washington who benefit from that corruption and the people in
the media
who also benefit from that corruption. By the way where does the money in politics go?
TV ads. Okay so, let's overturn their apple cart and say "No, no, we're take this
country back
to the people that it belongs to. Of the people, by the people
for the people.
They can't beat us if we have a constitutional answer.
They can play around with the laws, you can even play around with the Supreme Court.
But if you write it down in inc in the constitution –
sorry – that is an answer that they cannot compete with, and the only way you can do that –
money can't even buy that – the only way you can do that is to the American people
organizing, demanding it, and getting it
when we work together.
wolf-dash.com
That's how we do.