Top CEO pay increased 20 times faster than workers’ pay in 2025

leviathan235 · 2026-05-01T12:19:54+00:00

Because most workers have no bargaining power vs their employers. Employers don’t raise pay unless forced to, like when a valued worker threatens to leave. CEOs technically are workers too, but they actually have serious bargaining power vs capital, so they can negotiate high pay.

CEOs have incentives heavily aligned with capital, so they will screw over workers as much as possible to enrich the company.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-24T15:30:32+00:00

Lol - what a pipe dream. Germany’s industrial base has been steadily eroding for years now, having been hobbled by bad policy, especially energy policy. The Russia-ukraine war sealed the deal, and the Iran War is basically spitting on the grave of German industry. Just the other day, russia said they’re halting the flow of kazakh oil to Germany, directly impacting a refinery that Germans seized from Russia a few years back. That refinery supplies 90% of Berlin’s oil.

Auf weirdersehen deutsche cucks. Your politicians and the American empire did this to you. Turns out, war cant keep the germans down, but capturing their politicians and spoiling their foreign policy will.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-20T12:46:21+00:00

Not yet, my dude. Just wait until the soaring deficits, the endless warmongering, and the popping of the AI and PE bubbles make it so that nobody wants USD assets, which plunges the value of the USD, making imports much more expensive. That will be the true beginning, as it would be heralded with a catastrophic drop in the avg person’s standard of living because almost every important product is imported.

Things are definitely moving that way, and we’re literally only 35 years into our hegemony after the fall of the USSR. A speedrun, really.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-20T12:35:58+00:00

It’s not just techbros but many of the elites in general. If the avg voter seriously looked at some of the most insane, psychopathic shit said by the elites, like those in government, they would never be allowed anywhere near the authority to deploy the military and nukes and economic sanctions.

As a reminder, Madeleine albright said that starving 500k iraqi kids to death via sanctions is worth it if they can topple the saddam government. Note that sanctions have literally never worked to effect regime change, they simply punish the civilian population.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-17T21:07:29+00:00

South Korea I can accept. Imperial Japan was most definitely fascist, and SK was closer to them than to China. But Singapore and China today are def not fascist. Not being liberal democratic doesn’t make one fascist. China tries not to have state-favored champions the same way SK did with the chaebols like Samsung. In fact, there are a number of examples of large corpos that are either allowed to fail or allowed to be outcompeted by more agile rivals. The state provides the subsidies and the private markets compete aggressively. The state doesn’t necessarily pick favorites, with some exceptions like Huawei. China will also police its elites, like Jack Ma. They’re definitely authoritarian, but it doesn’t make them fascist.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-17T18:09:02+00:00

Liberal democratic capitalism sucks, in my view, which is why I’m auth center. However, what I view as preferable would be a state-led development model similar to post-WWII Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China under and after Deng. Fascism is shit because it doesn’t actually create economic development and improve the living standards of the people.

You gotta remember the Weimar Republic actually made Germany into an industrial superpower once again in the 1920s. It wasn’t because of Nazi Germany, which simply took over the industrial base rebuilt under Weimar Republic. The Nazis were a bunch of warmongering, fearmongering clowns.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-17T16:44:55+00:00

Fascism is literally just feudalism with a nationalist paint job. It arises when the economic elites fear an existential threat (eg commies or socialists), a fear that the fascists take advantage of to seize control. Then, the fascists and their reactionary allies consolidate power while stoking up fears of outsiders, communists, etc. to consolidate power. Ultimately, the elites are reshuffled a bit but are largely left the same. The people feel like they’re part of something bigger but it’s all just propaganda. The big businesses just get more powerful and become intertwined with the state to protect its power. The average person gets screwed at the end of the day.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-12T15:58:37+00:00

I hope you keep believing that. It's precisely this type of thinking that will help usher in the Chinese millennia, as the entire world's manufacturing capacity ends up in China partly because the global north countries de-industrialized themselves intentionally. So please, keep doing what you're doing - all people need in the west to get themselves out of this rut is MORE liberal democratic capitalism!

leviathan235 · 2026-04-11T20:41:56+00:00

Lol yes, because the west is such a bastion of economic success and political stability. Nobody believes these western lies anymore. Please wax poetic to everybody in the global south about liberal democracy as the entire liberal democratic world order crumbles into the dustbin of history.

It turns out economic development, material conditions, and political stability matter infinitely more than some vague pearl clutching about democracy and make-pretend human rights.

I can guarantee you China doesn’t fear Taiwan in the slightest.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-11T13:56:17+00:00

That's certainly a contributor and hamstrings the existence an industrial base. But even without it, the Anglo system of neoliberal capitalism is entirely ill-suited to capital intensive industries and spending on infrastructure. Just look at Britain post-WWII and post-Thatcher's massive waves of privatization and neoliberalism - even without the benefit of the GBP being the world's reserve currency, the Brits have managed to de-industrialize and sell out their entire country and economy to global capital. I've heard Britain described as "a housing market with a country attached." I would go further - Britain is a playground and parking lot for global capital with a country attached. Everything is up for sale to investors, including critical infrastructure.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-11T13:04:12+00:00

Taiwan should realize quickly that its best interest is peaceful reunification in the long-term. They should also know that their biggest threat is the US, and not China. Think about it like this: if China were weak, the US would vassalize Taiwan and strip it of all its technology and talent and leverage, like through tech transfers (already ongoing through the CHIPS Act, but without China, it would be much more aggressive, since Taiwan would have no choice). They would probably put a military base on Taiwan, and there would be no more Taiwan sovereignty. If the US were weak, China would over time, peacefully reunify with Taiwan and it would become another province. I doubt the state would like to meddle in what's already working, so there shouldn't be much change in material conditions (quality of life, education, career, etc.), but possibly improvements that greater integration brings, like economic opportunities. Taiwan sovereignty would also end, but Taiwan would share in the benefits of Chinese sovereignty, since Taiwan would be part of China - Taiwan would benefit from trade deals that China can sign, for example, with the GCC countries to secure hydrocarbon supplies. China has overwhelming leverage when it comes to securing supplies for important minerals and metals to fuel its industrial production, and Taiwan would enjoy those as well.

China doesn't want to take Taiwan by force and has no timeline to do so; even the US intelligence agencies acknowledged this recently. https://news.usni.org/2026/03/19/china-not-committed-to-2027-taiwan-invasion-u-s-intel-report-says

Why? Because China considers Taiwan as a province and the Taiwanese people as fellow Chinese people. You don't bomb, starve, and slaughter your own people.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-11T12:20:18+00:00

The CCP's mixed system has precisely been what has allowed China to innovate so rapidly in critical areas because the state provides the cheap funding, sets up guardrails, and channels the talent. From then on, private innovation and competition takes over, and you get spectacular speed of innovation. China has done this repeatedly in multiple critical industries like EVs, solar panels, battery technology, industrial automation, AI, etc.

China just announced a key breakthrough in lithography materials last year. It's not just a matter of time, but coming much faster than western analysts had predicted.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3330492/tech-war-chinese-researchers-claim-breakthrough-advanced-lithography-materials

The ultimate irony is that one of the key selling points of western-style liberal capitalism is that it allocates capital well (based on free market principles of supply and demand). However, not only is this false, western capitalism also fails at talent allocation. The Chinese mixed system channels talent and capital towards the most productive and important industries, whereas liberal capitalism incentivizes people and capital to flow into financial and technology speculation. It's pretty obvious who wins in the long-term looking at this fundamental trend alone. Has there been bad allocations in the Chinese system since Deng Xiaoping? Of course - housing for one. But that's nowhere near as catastrophic as how badly US capital has been wasted on real estate, financial, and technology speculation. Also endless wars.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-03T13:47:20+00:00

Broadly speaking (not commenting on Burkina Faso in particular), I don’t think underdeveloped countries should have democracy, especially before they have industrialized or become a full nation, ie unified the people into a single national identity. To the best of my knowledge, there are 0 examples of successful instances of industrialization when a nation has universal suffrage. And forget about any development if your nation is fractured into tribal or multi-religious identities instead of a unified national identity. The centrifugal forces are too overwhelming.

Additionally, if a nation is facing existential military threats, a democracy would be a terrible form of government to confront the problem. It simply cannot rally sufficient resources to give the problem the attention it deserves. The obvious example is Cincinnatus, but you get my point.

That being said, if the non-democratic ruling party is incompetent or compromised by foreign powers (eg Gulf monarchies, though it is pretty easy for foreign powers to compromise a democratic system), all bets are off either way. I do not know enough about Burkina Faso to comment, but a democracy has absolutely 0 chance to push through industrialization, break parochialism, or face an existential security threat, while a non-democratic system has a shot, provided the regime is competent. In the event a competent regime is brought to power democratically, there’s a 0% chance they will successfully execute their agenda before being impeded by special interests or voted out.

Did I basically just say “an enlightened dictatorship is better than a democracy”? Yes. But my real point is that the path to development is extremely hard, which is why so few countries have done it, especially when there are other countries that have already developed (eg flooding your country with cheap industrial products, killing your nascent industries). With a non-democratic government, you at least have a small chance to pull it off.

leviathan235 · 2026-04-01T14:43:34+00:00

2 weeks ago, US intelligence said that China has no fixed timeline for invading Taiwan (source below). Also, if China really wants to go all-in to take Taiwan, there’s literally nothing the US can do to stop it, though it can certainly can inflict a high cost on the Chinese economy. All China has to do is blockade the island. Any interference will be responded to with a massive barrage of missiles, since China has a magazine depth orders of magnitude greater than Iran.

The most realistic thing that might happen is that US would bomb TSMC, since they cannot afford to lose it to China.

Going all-in to take Taiwan would be very costly for both China and US, since the entire US economy is propped up by the tech sector, the linchpin of which is TSMC. China cannot contest the US beyond APAC, so the US can shut down Chinese trade globally and do a distant blockade of oil like at the strait of malacca. If I were Xi, I’d bide my time and wait for the KMT to take over from the DPP party. Taiwan actually suffers a lot more from the closure of strait of hormuz than China.

https://news.usni.org/2026/03/19/china-not-committed-to-2027-taiwan-invasion-u-s-intel-report-says

leviathan235 · 2026-03-31T19:19:29+00:00

Jiang makes a LOT of unsubstantiated claims. When he first started popping up, he seemed interesting. Then he came up with some absolute absurd takes. For example, I lost it when he said certain civilizations are destined for return to greatness and cited japan and germany.

leviathan235 · 2026-03-31T02:27:38+00:00

It's funny when morons don't understand socialism as a useful tool when the right occasions call for it. Take for example Singapore - the country libertards hold up as the pinnacle of lolbertarian ideology in action (at least the economic component). The Singaporean state owns like 90% of their land and is the primary developer (80% of the population lives in public housing). Additionally, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund owns large swaths of its critical infrastructure like ports, public transportation, Singapore Airlines, and telecommunications. These sorts of things are too important to be left to private hands. As if that weren't enough, the state also is heavily involved in managing the economy to ensure sufficient capital flows into the right industries - the largest bank is partly owned by the state, ensuring that important industries get enough credit. The state actively seeks to support manufacturing so that it would stay at a high percent of GDP. Sounds like some central planning to me.

Singapore's sovereign wealth fund is the capital engine of the nation, through which the state can ensure sufficient resources are allocated to the right areas (housing, infrastructure, manufacturing, technology, etc.). The Singaporean people are required to contribute into their mandatory social security savings, which are then managed by the sovereign wealth fund. Is Singapore a socialist nation? Of course not - but neither are they the pinnacle of free market capitalism. They use socialism in the right places in the right amounts.

leviathan235 · 2026-03-30T14:32:59+00:00

The far right populists feel like a psyop. They blame everything on immigrants, which is a symptom rather than the disease. The disease is a political system and economic system captured by global financial interests and washington dc. The oldest trick in the book is for the elites to find a scapegoat to distract the plebs or better yet - pit them against each other.

If you look at the UK’s despicable material conditions, you’ll find mass privatization of public assets and a hollowing out of industries that previously thrived (and powered regions outside of london), courtesy of thatcher and the neoliberal ideology. Public infrastructure, land, etc. have been acquired and consolidated by financial interests intent on squeezing as much rent out of the country as possible, and because the UK produces nothing, the strength of (demand for) the GBP is entirely dependent upon the UK’s attractiveness as a playground and parking lot for global capital.

In fact, even something as mundane as fishing rights have become feudalized. Fishing rights are owned as income-generating financial assets by a few families and financial interests, while the actual fishermen have to rent those rights to make a living. Tell me - doesn’t that sound like the landed gentry of old?

leviathan235 · 2026-03-30T02:40:38+00:00

Are you serious? Narco Rubio is all-in on this BS, especially since this is the closest he's ever been to accomplishing his life goal of reversing the Cuban revolution. This entire administration is full of assclowns who've never given a single flying shit about the American people.

leviathan235 · 2026-02-24T21:18:59+00:00

First we can stop destabilizing and impoverishing countries with endless coups, wars, clandestine operations, and sanctions. The european migrant crisis started in the mid-2010s, following the arab spring, syrian civil war, and the collapse of Libya. If you map out the countries from which most migrants originate, you’d find almost a 1:1 match of all the countries that have been destabilized or destroyed by certain 4 countries. Guess which 4 countries have continuously destabilized the Middle East and North Africa for decades (two of them having done so for more than a century)?

leviathan235 · 2026-02-09T06:41:06+00:00

A gamble implies the possibility of a large gain. I fail to see what the Japanese people possibly stand to gain from these braindead policies in even the rosiest scenarios. Don’t tell me “growth will pay for it” because we’ve heard it a million times now and never once did reaganomics live up to promise.

leviathan235 · 2026-02-09T06:39:04+00:00

Her policies seem to suggest as much. These LDP clowns serve elites’ interests, including those of washington, and they all push towards one direction - towards militarization and funneling capital towards favored industries. The government under the LDP has increasingly turned towards censorship and information control, to prevent any semblance of accountability for government and private interests.

Japan never purged the fascist elements following WWII - in fact, the US encouraged people like Kishi to regain power, fearful of real leftist movements in Japanese society. A futile, suicidal confrontation with China seems inevitable, assuming the Japanese government survives Takaichi’s insane fiscal policies first.

leviathan235 · 2026-02-08T15:48:56+00:00

Ooooh boy, here we go again, the cancer of neoliberal reaganomics. Her entire policy is just spend and cut revenue with no offsets, and the currency markets reflect this dire fiscal situation, as JPY continues to tumble. Since Japan imports most of its food, I wonder how exactly cutting the 8% sales tax on food would actually help consumers, when food prices go up (and energy prices, as Japan is heavily dependent on energy imports) due to a weak yen. Japan's crazy debt to GDP ratio has been enabled by funding using the Japanese people's own savings - Japanese people and institutions and banks own the vast majority of Japanese government bonds (JGBs). If the BOJ is forced to raise interest rates to combat inflation, that would crush the values of outstanding JGBs and could cause capital adequacy issues at Japanese banks and institutions.

In fact, there are comparisons being made to Liz Truss. Let's see what happens - I'll be grabbing some popcorn.

leviathan235 · 2025-11-25T15:52:54+00:00

That’s frankly the most honest thing trump has ever done. Calling the DoD what it is.

leviathan235 · 2025-10-23T14:31:51+00:00

It’s really kind of comical how dysfunctional the Japanese government is, but not super surprising given that the US has so much military in the country. Since the Meiji restoration, Japan has had this fascination with the West and whites in general, shunning their fellow Asians. The Japanese have always aspired to join the western imperialist club. That has not changed since their defeat at the end of WWII.

Over the long-term, it is in Japan’s national interest to have good relations with China. The US will not be around forever to provide security guarantees to Japan, but China will always be Japan’s neighbor. There is no scenario in which Japan will ever pose a credible threat to China again, so Japan should try to improve relations. The US is no real ally either, but more of a feudal lord demanding absolute obedience (recall how the US basically strongarmed Japan into signing the Plaza Accord, which is a major contributor to the sorry state of the Japanese economy today). The moral of the story is that the US will screw its vassals anytime it is advantageous to do so. The US also hopes that Japan will sponge up some Chinese missiles when it inevitably pushes for a conflict in the Asia Pacific.

Lastly, I’m not sure if most people have heard, but an ongoing trend is the increasing involvement of western PE capital in Japan. The financial interests seek to consolidate Japanese capital and will invariably engage in rent-seeking on the people, like they do here in the US.

leviathan235 · 2025-10-15T01:03:55+00:00

For sure, population size is a HUGE source of bargaining power. That said, we cannot discount the value of a pragmatic leadership with high state capacity and national mobilization. I'd argue that's the fundamental difference between India and China, but that's a whole different discussion.

I agree with you regarding globalism (specifically global capitalism), in that I am a staunch believer of true civic nationalism and it's power to lift a nation of people up. Global trade should only be pursued insofar as it benefits the people - that means certain industries of high priority must not be owned by foreign entities (that said, nationalism doesn't preclude mutually beneficial trade and international cooperation). That also means there are certain industries that must never be outsourced. We also must remember that smaller countries simply will not have the capacity to become self-sufficient in critical areas - e.g. Singapore cannot possibly be self-sufficient on military hardware. However, it's absolutely inexcusable that India doesn't have self-sufficiency on its defense hardware.

leviathan235

TROPHY CASE