CEOs Are Looting the Ship While Workers Bail Water

Hello everyone. Once again, capitalism has parked its flaming clown car on the lawn, insisting that the fire is “innovation” while workers choke on the fumes. Today’s helpful little bonfire of greed comes courtesy of the Institute for Policy Studies, who dug deep into the cesspit of corporate inequality and presented the annual “Executive Excess” report. The findings? CEOs are greed monsters siphoning cash out of corporations like they’re on a speedrun for personal enrichment, while workers fend off rising costs of living equipped with nothing but duct tape and prayers.

The Low-Wage 100: An Achievement in Exploitative Capitalism

The stars of this parade of shame are something called the “Low-Wage 100,” which sounds like it could be an indie punk band or maybe a PUBG clan tag, but unfortunately, it’s just the 100 S&P 500 corporations who have turned worker misery into an art form. These companies have the lowest median worker pay, and oh boy, do they deserve the recognition they’re getting for being flag-bearers of greed.

Between 2019 and 2024, CEO pay at these companies skyrocketed by nearly 35%, while their workers got a measly 16% bump – which wouldn’t even cover the cost of eggs at your local grocery store post-inflation. Worse still, U.S. inflation itself clocked in at 22.6%. Translation: you got a real pay cut. And the CEOs? They’re cashing $17.2 million on average, while the person working the register at Ulta Beauty is clearing less than the cost of a decent gaming PC.

The Pay Ratio Circus

One of my favorite findings here is the CEO-to-worker pay ratio. In 2019, it was already obscene at 560:1. Fast-forward to 2024, and we’ve hit 632:1. That makes Elden Ring bosses look balanced by comparison. And then you’ve got Starbucks flexing with a pay gap of 6,666 to 1. Yes, that’s the actual figure – not satire, not Photoshop. Satan himself couldn’t come up with a more suitable number. The Starbucks CEO raked in just shy of $100 million while the baristas fueling this empire took home barely $14,674 annually. That’s an income level where saying “I’m a broke college student” isn’t an excuse – it’s a lifestyle brand.

Meanwhile, Ulta Beauty – apparently allergic to paying its workers more than crumbs – slashed median pay nearly in half since 2019, down to an insulting $11,078. That’s not a paycheck; that’s a cruel joke pretending to be financial stability.

The Great Buyback Scam

Now let’s talk about stock buybacks, the favorite minigame of the executive elite. You’d think corporations would want to invest in better stores, technology, or god forbid, workers. But no, why build anything real when you can inflate stock prices, plunder shareholder capital, and pad your own stock bonuses? Between 2019 and 2024, the Low-Wage 100 splurged an eye-watering $644 billion on buybacks. Yes, billion with a “b.”

• Lowe’s: $46.6 billion burned on buybacks. Could have given each worker a $28,000 bonus, but hey, Marvin Ellison needed his $20.2 million paycheck. Priorities.
• Home Depot: $37.9 billion scorched. That’s six years’ worth of $13,000 bonuses staff will never see, thanks to a corporate preference for stock manipulation.

If you exclude Amazon – the CapEx unicorn – most of these companies are spending more on buybacks than on capital improvements. It’s like running a raid party where instead of using heals on your group, the cleric keeps spamming buffs for himself. Unsurprisingly, that raid wipes.

Corporate Billionaire Factories

At least 32 billionaires owe their fortunes to these low-wage factories of despair. Walmart leads the charge with eight billionaires. Estee Lauder pumps out four oligarchs like they’re on an assembly line. DoorDash has three. Exploitation, it seems, is still the best get-rich-quick scheme in town.

Policy Band-Aids or Real Solutions?

The report doesn’t just rage quit. It proposes policy solutions. Tax hikes on companies with obscene CEO-to-worker pay ratios, higher excise taxes for buybacks, and tying federal contracts to fairer pay. On paper, these ideas have support. Eighty percent of voters, for example, think maybe – just maybe – paying your CEO 500 times the worker’s wage deserves more than a slap on the wrist.

But let’s be real. Washington “Fix-It” Politics is like patch notes for a buggy live-service game: small tweaks that don’t actually address the game-breaking exploit everyone’s abusing. At best, these reforms slow the bleeding; at worst, they’re political theater to distract us while the loot boxes (read: campaign donations) keep flowing.

Diagnosis: Terminal Greed

If I were writing a medical chart for Corporate America, the prognosis would be as follows: chronic stock-buyback addiction, acute wage suppression disorder, and advanced-stage CEO ego hypertrophy. Patient is noncompliant with treatment and continues to hoard resources despite multiple interventions. Recommendation: aggressive taxation and possible hospice care.

Conclusion: Looted Democracy

So here’s the bottom line. The Low-Wage 100 isn’t just a report; it’s a mirror held up to America’s economic soul, and the reflection is uglier than the Fallout 76 launch build. CEOs get richer, workers get poorer, and the government occasionally peeks out from behind its corporate donors to say “tsk, tsk” before cashing another campaign check. Unless something drastic changes, the wage gap isn’t narrowing – it’s becoming a yawning canyon where democracy itself falls in.

My overall impression? Bad. Very, very bad. This isn’t a sandbox economy experiment gone wrong. It’s deliberate, exploitative game design – only the players don’t get to rage quit.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.

Article Source: CEO pay and stock buybacks have soared at the 100 largest low-wage corporations, Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess 2025 Report.