🏢Corporations pay 25% less to Wages and Benefits then Pre-1982

💵 “The Earnings Culture vs. Worker Pay"

By Holy Upset George (First President, Reluctant Host, Eternal Holy man)

My Fellow Americans,

It is I, me — once Father of the Nation 👨‍🌾🇺🇸, now just a dusty fellow on your money who gets dragged out every time someone wants to buy skittles. And let me tell you, if I had known the nation would one day replace fair wages with stock buybacks, I might’ve stayed at Mount Vernon drinking whiskey. 🥃

📈 What Is “Earnings Culture”?

• Corporations today live not to build but to perform — quarterly earnings calls are their Superbowl 🏈.

• Profits go to stock buybacks 🔄 and dividends 💰 instead of wages or expansion.

• CEOs are rewarded like Roman emperors, while workers are told: “Your raise is the friends we made along the way.”

👷 Worker Pay: The Forgotten Ingredient

• In my day, we had no HR department. Pay was “Here’s some coin, don’t desert.” 🪙

• But at least labor was rewarded for building something real.

• Now? Median wages stagnate while CEO pay has gone from 20x worker pay in the 1970s → 300–400x today.

• Even Benedict Arnold would blush at that betrayal. ⚔️

🏛️ How We Got Here

1. 1982: Stock buybacks legalized → corporations could pump their stock like it was frontier moonshine. 🥃

2. Globalization: Jobs shipped overseas faster than Redcoats retreating at Yorktown. 🚢

3. Weak Unions: Worker bargaining power fell harder than a Continental soldier without boots. 🥶

4. Tax Shifts: Corporations went from paying 6% of GDP → 1% today, while payroll taxes doubled. Workers fund the republic, companies fund the Cayman Islands. 🏝️

⚖️ The Debate

• Earnings culture defenders: “Buybacks make markets efficient and reward shareholders.”

• Worker pay advocates: “You can’t eat efficiency. Try paying rent with stock buybacks.”

🔮 The Washington Warning

My wooden teeth may not be real, but this truth is: an economy that forgets its workers will eventually forget how to grow. If all profits are siphoned to Wall Street, Main Street turns into a ghost town. And trust me — you don’t want to join me on the other side just yet. 👻

✍️ Final Word

So hear me, America

• If you want a strong republic, you must invest in the worker, not just the ticker symbol.

• Break the chains of “earnings culture” and rediscover the wages of fairness.

• Or as I might have said in 1776: No taxation without participation.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I must return to haunting cherry trees. 🌳🔪

— Holy upset George , Ghost of Paychecks Past