Sunday, October 30, 2011

Occupy Wall Street and Vague Statistics

Besides the white-washing of the more unsavory aspects of the Occupy Wall Street kids (including public masturbation in Madison, rape and sexual assault in NYC, and a guy caught on camera defecating on a NYPD patrol car), as well as the fact that the movement is more astro-turfed than their media sympathizers will acknowledge, the protesters’ grievances and demands are still vague.

One chart related to the OWS’s “cause” that I’ve seen on-line in various places concerns the non-story about the ratio of corporate executive’s salaries to the salaries of average workers:
Ratio of CEO to Worker Salary

I saw that and thought a little research was called for and made my own chart in response:
Ratio of CEO to Worker Sallary, Fortune 500 Corporations by Country, and Per Capita Grass Domestic Product

As indicated, I got the statistics for the Global 500 Corporations and the Per Capita GDP from reliable sources(CNN/Forbes and the IMF, respectively), but I’ve never see a source for those CEO:Worker salary ratios. I wouldn’t even know how to start finding that information. Does somebody compile average CEO salaries by country? That’s a task for some slow day at the reference desk.

1 comment:

Roman Long said...

Hi Bryan,

I did a little research for you and indeed there are organizations that compile this data! Here is a CNN Money report detailing where CNN Money reporter, Jennifer Liberto, found this data and there are several related links to organizations that chiefly deal with examining inequality in America.
CNN Money report: http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/
Additionally, here is the AFL-CIO website that has a report they recently published on CEO to average worker pay: http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/CEO-Pay-and-You
One more from me, here is the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) website that has reports anywhere from reporting on the Global Progress Indicator (GPI), Inequalities, to environmental and sustainability issues. Web address located here: http://www.ips-dc.org/
I hope you enjoy!