Claim: The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than at any time since just before the Great Depression.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Wage ratio
text: the typical worker’s pay in the 1950s, with that multiple rising to 42-to-1 in 1980, and to 120-to-1 in 2000". While not as extreme, similar trends have been observed around the world. With wage ratios steadily climbing, there has been a push to have increased transparency in publicizing the ratio for many of the world's largest companies. There have also been a number of movements around to the world to attempt to regulate the pay ratio between executives and workers, or to regulate executive pay from the workers' end. Canada: The Wagemark Foundation, a Toronto-based not-for-profit organization is working to

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: since 1855, confirming Marx's hypothesis. In 2007, John Bradford reassessed the theory of the TRPF, and computed the trends for US manufacturing and non-financials for 1930 to 2005. Basu et al. (2012) reported evidence of a falling U.S. profit rate at about 0.3% a year on average for 1948–2007, Basu et al. (2013) noted there is no "general theory" of capitalist crisis, and that the correct measurement and true economic role of profitability are still disputed. In a 2014 Swedish thesis, Kalogerakos applies multivariate cointegration analysis to U.S. manufacturing data 1948–2011, to analyze the relationships between the profit rate, capital

title: Opposition to trade unions
text: through company profits. However, as Milton Friedman pointed out, profits are only very rarely high enough. 80% of national income is wages, and only about 6% is profits after tax, providing very little room for higher wages, even if profits could be totally used up. Moreover, profits are invested leading to an increase in capital: which raises the value of labor, increasing wages. If profits were totally removed, this source of wage increase would be removed. According to The New York Times, wages in 2012 fell to a record low of 43.5 percent of GDP. Friedrich Hayek argued that the

title: Causes of income inequality in the United States
text: in estate and capital gains taxes, and tax rates on high levels of income. Arguing against the proposition that the explosion in pay for corporate executives – which grew from 35X average worker pay in 1978 to over 250X average pay before the 2007 recession – is driven by an increased demand for scarce talent and set according to performance, Krugman points out that multiple factors outside of executives' control govern corporate profitability, particularly in short term when the head of a company like Enron may look like a great success. Further, corporate boards follow other companies in setting pay

title: Wage ratio
text: Wage ratio In economics, the wage ratio refers to the ratio of the top salaries in a group (company, city, country, etc.) to the bottom salaries. It is a measure of wage dispersion. There has been a resurgence for the importance of equitable wage ratio. The amount of money paid out to executives has steadily been on the rise. "An April 2013 study by Bloomberg finds that large public company CEOs were paid an average of 204 times the compensation of rank-and-file workers in their industries. By comparison, it is estimated that the average CEO was paid about 20 times

title: Causes of income inequality in the United States
text: propounds that a swelling corporate financial and banking sector has caused Gini Coefficients to rise in the U.S. since 1980: "Financial services' share of GDP in America doubled to 8% between 1980 and 2000; over the same period their profits rose from about 10% to 35% of total corporate profits, before collapsing in 2007–09. Bankers are being paid more, too. In America the compensation of workers in financial services was similar to average compensation until 1980. Now it is twice that average." The summary argument, considering these findings, is that if corporatism is the consolidation and sharing of economic and

title: Rate of profit
text: so than before sales per worker have been increased, causes the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Thus, capitalists are caught in a prisoner's dilemma or rationality trap. This "new" rate of profit (r'), which tends to fall, would be measured as At the beginning of a "year" (possibly another length of time period, in this case other numerical values will arise) the capitalist has to invest an amount of capital. For example, he must invest: Now, it is assumed that during the year the capitalist can produce and sell commodities at a total price of "300 €".

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: deflation—lower prices, lower profits—would be followed by worldwide revolution. Instead, capitalism has become vastly more profitable”. The McKinsey Global Institute claims that the three decades from 1985 to 2014 were the golden years for profits from stocks and bonds, but forecasts that average profitability will be lower in the future. In May 2018, a WSJ analyst concluded that if taxcut effects are removed from the figures, real US corporate profits were not growing anymore, notwithstanding a surge in profits on S&P listed shares. Another WSJ analyst commented, at the same date, that "With the profits data, it could take several

title: Human resources
text: after several strikes and employee lockouts. This action was followed by other companies, for example, Ford had high turnover ratios of 380 percent in 1913, but just one year later, the line workers of the company has doubled their daily salaries from $2.50 to $5, even though $2.50 was a fair wage at that time. This example clearly shows the importance of effective management which leads to a greater outcome of employee satisfaction as well as encouraging employees to work together in order to achieve better business objectives. During the 1970s, American business began experiencing challenges due to the substantial

title: Wage ratio
text: median pay of their workers in 2017. Wage ratio In economics, the wage ratio refers to the ratio of the top salaries in a group (company, city, country, etc.) to the bottom salaries. It is a measure of wage dispersion. There has been a resurgence for the importance of equitable wage ratio. The amount of money paid out to executives has steadily been on the rise. "An April 2013 study by Bloomberg finds that large public company CEOs were paid an average of 204 times the compensation of rank-and-file workers in their industries. By comparison, it is estimated that the

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: For Europe, Mario Draghi suggested an average increase in "structural" unemployment from 8.8% in 2008 to 10.3% by 2013. Just as in the 1970s and 1980s, the grand-average jobless rate has risen to a higher level. This creates a downward pressure on the modal average real wage, though at the top end salary packages still increase. In September 2014, Robert Reich noted that although profits were at record levels, the median US household income, adjusted for inflation, was 8% lower than in 2007. By 2016, US median personal income had recovered again to the pre-crash level, and began to rise

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: income of these sectors represents a "deduction" from the new value created in the productive sectors of the economy. Booms in unproductive sectors may temporarily act as a countervailing factor to the TRPF, but not in the long run. Professor Fred Moseley argues that in the United States the grand-average rate of profit on production capital is lower than it was in the first decades after World War II, in part because of a rising share of unproductive labor in the total workforce, raising aggregate costs. This is a reason of its own for a falling average rate of profit.

title: Corporatocracy
text: assets in 1998; this rose to 45% by 2008 and to 48% by 2010, before falling to 47% in 2011. The Economist also explained how an increasingly profitable corporate financial and banking sector caused Gini coefficients to rise in the U.S. since 1980: "Financial services' share of GDP in America doubled to 8% between 1980 and 2000; over the same period their profits rose from about 10% to 35% of total corporate profits, before collapsing in 2007–09. Bankers are being paid more, too. In America the compensation of workers in financial services was similar to average compensation until 1980. Now

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: time that the statistical data available in Marx's time were "wholly inadequate" to understand variability in the capital/income ratio. In a French interview together with David Graeber, Piketty commented: In a May 2014 review of Piketty's book, the Marxist geographer David Harvey argued that capitalists nowadays drive up the industrial rate of profit by restricting the supply of capital to new (productive) investment. For example, Chinese steel producers agreed to reduce steel production in response to overcapacity that emerged in 2015, and steel prices and profits were expected to rise significantly by 2018. Indeed, steel prices had approximately doubled by

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: Hyman Minsky, which briefly became popular again in the 2007–2009 crisis. The crisis was called a "Minsky moment". Increasingly leading Marxist and semi-Marxist scholars began to focus on the importance of debt-driven accumulation for the average rate of profit. In the 1980s and 1990s, governments forced interest rates and inflation rates down to a very low level, and began to deregulate capital markets. They expected that new business investment would take off, and that unemployment problems would disappear. To an extent that was true, in the shorter term – although real wages did not increase much anymore. The long-term structural

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: early 1980s, there were concerns among non-Marxist economists that the profit rate could be really falling. From time to time, the research units of banks and government departments produce studies of profitability in various sectors of industry. The National Statistics Office of Britain now releases company profitability statistics every quarter, showing increasing profits. In the UK, Ernst & Young (EY) nowadays provide a "Profit Warning Stress Index" for quoted companies. The American-Jewish magazine Tablet claims that "[Marx’s] essential idea, influenced by Ricardo, was that capitalism would become less and less profitable and that its downward spiral toward the abyss of

title: Tax policy and economic inequality in the United States
text: wages from 1979–2009. The real wages of the top fifth rose by 99% and then 55% during the same periods, respectively. Average real hourly wages have also increased by a significantly larger rate for the top 20% than they have for the bottom 20%. Real family income for the bottom 20% increased by 7.4% from 1979 to 2009 while it increased by 49% for the top 20% and increased by 22.7% for the second top fifth of American families. As of 2007, the United Nations estimated the ratio of average income for the top 10% to the bottom 10% of

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: labour and capital is shifting more and more in favour of capital. It was not just that Western capitalism and corporate profits boomed through most of the 1990s and the 2000s, and strongly recovered after 2009 – reducing the credibility of the TRPF narrative. Or that profit statistics and measurements are dubious. Or that billionaires are donating a lot of their wealth to charity (admittedly, often also for tax reasons) and implore the government to raise taxes on the wealthy (see also: "The Giving Pledge" and ")". There is so much more to say about capitalism, than just its profitability

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: profit rate fell after 1959, and stabilized from 1982 at a level similar to that in the 19th century. He reports that all German enterprises together now invest 60% of their capital in financial assets, as against 40% in 1970. Ivan Trofimov (2017) finds diverse patterns in profit rates in different groups of developed countries, suggesting that a universal law governing profit rates is unlikely, and that just one hypothesis cannot explain all the data. Resende (2018) found no systematic evidence for a falling tendency in the U.S. rate of profit. So far, there does not exist any study yet,

title: Tendency of the rate of profit to fall
text: capital coefficient (referring to the capital/output ratio), where in the course of time more and more capital is required to obtain each additional increase in output. The profit rate rises again, only after a major crisis or a war which destroys a sufficiently large amount of capital value, raises the rate of surplus value, and clears the way for new production techniques. However, it is a simple accounting error to think, that: Almost any corporate account can show that such hypotheses are false. If an enterprise borrows or leases capital for production, rather than investing its own equity, this affects