Consider a CEO of a large corporation that receives a total annual compensation of $10 million; $10 million is certainly a large amount of money for one individual but now consider that this same corporation employees 100,000 workers as is the case with many of the large corporations that operate in the industries in which a large percentage of the workers are in low-wage positions, such as the retail and restaurant industries.
Now let us assume that this CEO agrees to forgo their annual compensation and instead work for free, therefore allowing their would be $10 million to be shared equally among the other 100,000 workers:
$10,000,000 CEO compensation / 100,000 workers = $100 increase per worker per year
$100 per worker per year / 52 weeks in a year = $1.92 increase per worker per week
$1.92 per worker per week / 40 hour work week = $0.05 increase per worker per hour
With such simple math so quickly and clearly demonstrating the reality of the relationship between CEO and average worker pay, why then do some politicians dedicate their campaigns to attacking businesses while claiming to voters that if these businesses didn't pay their CEOs millions of dollars a year they could afford to pay the rest of their workers $15 per hour and provide each worker thousands of dollars of health care coverage for free, when in reality simple math demonstrates a raise in the range of pennies per hour totaling approximately $100 per year?
This book was written with my 20 year old self in mind. My political views are now significantly different from what they were at 20 years old simply because of years of experience and a better understanding of business and investing; and that is what this book is about. "American Politics and the Economy" is a very short book written for those readers of all ages that are very passionate about politics but may not be so passionate about, or may not have significant experience in, business or investing; it focuses on a small number of topics that relate to economic policies currently being debated in the United States such as:
Who really owns the large American corporations? How do middle class workers afford retirement? Why are some people against raising the minimum wage? Is it because they are against helping hard workers that are struggling, or is it because an increase in the minimum wage would actually do more harm than good to many of these same workers?
It first focuses on the fundamentals of a business, including the ownership structure and the questions of how and why businesses make decisions, in order to then be able to examine the impacts of policies from the perspective of the business owner, with the ultimate goal of the book being to demonstrate why some of the policies proposed by politicians that indeed seem helpful on the surface would actually do more harm than good to the people they're intended to help.
Now let us assume that this CEO agrees to forgo their annual compensation and instead work for free, therefore allowing their would be $10 million to be shared equally among the other 100,000 workers:
$10,000,000 CEO compensation / 100,000 workers = $100 increase per worker per year
$100 per worker per year / 52 weeks in a year = $1.92 increase per worker per week
$1.92 per worker per week / 40 hour work week = $0.05 increase per worker per hour
With such simple math so quickly and clearly demonstrating the reality of the relationship between CEO and average worker pay, why then do some politicians dedicate their campaigns to attacking businesses while claiming to voters that if these businesses didn't pay their CEOs millions of dollars a year they could afford to pay the rest of their workers $15 per hour and provide each worker thousands of dollars of health care coverage for free, when in reality simple math demonstrates a raise in the range of pennies per hour totaling approximately $100 per year?
This book was written with my 20 year old self in mind. My political views are now significantly different from what they were at 20 years old simply because of years of experience and a better understanding of business and investing; and that is what this book is about. "American Politics and the Economy" is a very short book written for those readers of all ages that are very passionate about politics but may not be so passionate about, or may not have significant experience in, business or investing; it focuses on a small number of topics that relate to economic policies currently being debated in the United States such as:
Who really owns the large American corporations? How do middle class workers afford retirement? Why are some people against raising the minimum wage? Is it because they are against helping hard workers that are struggling, or is it because an increase in the minimum wage would actually do more harm than good to many of these same workers?
It first focuses on the fundamentals of a business, including the ownership structure and the questions of how and why businesses make decisions, in order to then be able to examine the impacts of policies from the perspective of the business owner, with the ultimate goal of the book being to demonstrate why some of the policies proposed by politicians that indeed seem helpful on the surface would actually do more harm than good to the people they're intended to help.
