A Real World Billionaire's Club

Good morning,

I’ve had the luxury of spending the past month in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; directly at the feet of Grand Teton National Park. And I’ve got to say, this just might be the most beautiful location in the US. As I have gotten older, I have grown to appreciate having a greater distance between myself and my closest neighbor. Its peaceful. With that in mind, I’d reckon its hard to top a place as quiet, natural, rugged and beautiful as this part of the country.

A picture I captured, for context:

Anyways, The September 24th Weekly Three:

• Rupert Murdoch, founder and longtime Chairman of Fox News and its holdings, and thus one of the most wealthy, powerful, influential (and in my opinion, worst) human beings to ever live is stepping down from his role, where his son will now takeover.

• The Biden administration is launching a “Climate Corps” jobs program to address climate change and create jobs.

• Democrats are calling for the resignation of one of there own Senators, Bob Menendez, after he was federally indicted in a pretty crazy bribery scandal that involved gold bars, and a a lot of physical cash.

The Real World Billionaire’s Club

For the past three months, Hollywood’s largest writer’s union has been on strike, demanding better pay and working conditions that are in line with the economic production they drive through the stories they create. Also just this past week, the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), representing contracts for 145,000 UAW members at three of the largest auto companies, General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, went on a strike as well.

At first glance, you may not see too many similarities between these two industries, and these two union strikes. But a peek below the surface reveals some telling relationships.

I’ve written in (somewhat) jest before about how the ultra-wealthy all belong to the same metaphorical rich peoples club. But there is an actual, real world billionaires club that two of the top executives of the companies these strikes are aimed at have a prominent role within.

It’s called the Business Roundtable, and for decades its served as the meeting ground for the CEOs of top industry companies, and the lobbying arm of some of the richest people our planet has ever seen.

At the moment, its chairman is General Motors CEO Mary Barra, who raked in $29 million last year. Also on this “prestigious” board is Disney CEO Bob Iger, who as of late has been very outspoken against the Hollywood Writer’s strike, whose work has benefitted him and Disney immensely.

Not only are Bob and Mary part of this same corporate lobbying group, but they also appear to be close friends. In fact, Mary actually sits on the Disney board which oversees Bob’s pay, and her outspoken support for her colleague helped him pull in $27 million alone since returning to helm Disney this past year.

While these incredibly wealthy individuals use their connections and influence to compound eachother’s wealth, they also work very hard to push a particular narrative out: They’d like the average person to believe that the demands of the workers of the striking industries they oversee are selfish, ungrateful, and unrealistic. And at the same time they push this viewpoint, they attempt to quietly fill their pockets with wealth that was primarily generated by the people whose strikes they are trying to silence.

Lets set some context: If you’ve been reading my newsletter each week, or paying attention, you are likely at least familiar with the wealth disparity our country faces between the top 1% (even 0.1%) and the rest of the population.

When it comes to wealth and income, I believe the average person has been trained to think of their value in terms of their yearly salary; our wages. But far more influential than our wage is the actual economic output we generate for the businesses we work at. After all, the monetary value we generate is the reason jobs exist. So with that in mind, its far more important to compare our wage with the economic production we create through our day to day job functions.

Spoiler alert: its completely out of whack.

According to CNBC, while wages have increased by 17.5% since 1979, economic productivity has gone up a whopping 68.5%. There are number of reasons for this productivity increase, namely innovative technologies ranging from computers, to AI, to other new automations. These new tools have enabled incredible breakthroughs in every sector, yet despite this dramatic increase in productivity, worker’s wages remain far behind.

What this means is the vast majority of people are probably being underpaid, some even dramatically so, in comparison to their economic output. But this economic output, (also know as, you know, money) doesn’t just disappear into the ether. No, this money and wealth has increasingly gone directly into the pockets of corporate leaders like Bob and Mary.

As reported by CBS, factoring in the nation's 350 largest companies, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965, according to the Economic Policy Institute. That figure jumped to 59-to-1 in 1989 and is now at 399-to-1 as of 2021.

There is no one person on earth doing 400 times the amount of work as another human being. Full stop.

As this top class of wealth hoarders grow, so does their financial push of a narrative that only benefits their bottom line.

The Business Roundtable recently issued a news release about the UAW strike which states the “Business Roundtable is deeply concerned about the widespread impact of the UAW strike on the U.S. economy. The repercussions will be felt by workers, businesses and communities beyond the auto industry and will continue to get worse each day that passes.” Put another way, these strikes really do hurt the wallets of these incredibly wealthy CEOs, and according to them, increasing the wages of workers somehow hurts… the workers?

So when you see these trikes, and these union demands, and corporate executives spewing a narrative about how unrealistic they are. It is vital to remember that these calls for higher wages are to catch up to a massive and growing disparity between the workers who make these companies run, and the leadership at the top lining their pockets off their labor.

To me, the bottom line is that someone making 150k a year has far more in common with someone making 30k a year than they will ever have with this class of ultra wealthy billionaires. I believe we need to remember that.