Canada’s Top CEOs Have Already Earned Your 2018 Salary

Here is your annual reminder that the rich are a completely different class, earn amounts of money that are unfathomable to the rest of us and that you, yes you, will never ever earn that amount because the system is rigged against you and for them.

Wheeee!!!!

In fact, Canada’s top CEOs were able to earn what most of us do in a year by [ squints to read a recent report from the think tank Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives] the time most of us had our second cup of coffee today. According to the CCPA report, the average salary a Canadian will take home is $49,738 and the 100 highest paid CEOs earned that before 10:57 AM on January 2.

Oh, you say to yourself, I work in the oilfield or whatever and earn a little over a 100K—well, A) good for you and B) before you’re done your third twelve hour shift they’ll have earned what you will make by December 31. All in all, the top earners in Canada are taking home more than they have in quite a while.

“In 2016, Canada’s 100 highest-paid CEOs made on average $10.4 million—209 times the income of $49,738 that year,” reads the report. “This is the first time the ratio of CEO pay to average pay has surpassed 200:1 (it was 193:1 in 2015).”

“When we started compiling this data, the average CEO had to work until late afternoon to meet this milestone. It has been getting closer to breakfast in most of the years since.”

CCPA was able to get their data by analyzing income stats from 2016. The study also found that while the average Canadian salary went up by 0.5 percent, a little over $200 per person, the average CEOs went up by 8 percent. A little fun fact included in the study is that only three of the top 100 CEOs are women.

The study states that solving the income inequality that exists in Canada won’t be simple but recommends “comprehensive amendments to the Income Tax Act, such that any capital gains incurred on any instrument used for compensation are taxed as employment income.” It goes on to say that if, by some miracle, we do rein in CEO salaries it would result in “higher tax revenues, better company performance, and possibly improved social cohesion in Canada.”

“We should not treat it as normal nor inevitable that Canada’s richest CEOs take home the average worker’s salary by mid-morning on January 2,” reads a portion of the study.

It’s pretty hard to disagree.

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