"In 2024, Niccol pocketed $95.8 million in compensation. With that windfall, he could have purchased 6,843 units of his favorite coffee maker-more than enough to luxuriously outfit every single elementary-school teachers' lounge in the state of California."
"At many of our nation's largest employers, median salaries have fallen below the $36,777 family-of-three income threshold for Medicaid benefits. Those employers, our research at the Institute for Policy Studies finds, are familiar names to most Americans: Starbucks, Home Depot, Autozone, Chipotle, Target, Walmart, and other corporate giants."
"Pay practices at big businesses like these don't just shaft workers. They allow corporations to shift their employees' basic living costs onto taxpayers, which means we're all subsidizing Brian Niccol's ocean-view lattes-and the corporate jet he uses to commute to the company's headquarters in Seattle."
Major U.S. corporations including Starbucks, Walmart, Target, and Home Depot pay median worker salaries below the $36,777 Medicaid eligibility threshold for families of three. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol earned $95.8 million in 2024 while median workers earned $14,674 annually. This extreme pay disparity forces corporations to shift employee living costs onto taxpayers through public assistance programs. Additionally, corporations engage in massive stock buyback programs, such as Lowe's $47 billion expenditure over six years, further prioritizing shareholder returns over worker compensation. The widening inequality gap, which accelerated during the Reagan era, creates corrosive social costs, particularly as budget cuts threaten food and medical aid for working families.
Read at The Nation
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