Aptiv’s CEO took home $18.8 million last year. The median worker at that same company made $9,052. That’s not a typo. Someone working full-time at Aptiv earns less than what most people spend on rent, while the guy running the place pulls in more per day than his employees see in a month. Ross Stores — same story. CEO gets $17 million, median worker gets $9,602. A hundred major companies are running this exact playbook and nobody blinks.
Meanwhile the national conversation is about tariffs and culture war nonsense instead of the fact that corporate America built a caste system and called it the free market. Nobody’s in the streets over pay ratios that would make a feudal lord uncomfortable. The money is right there. It was always right there. But sure, let’s keep arguing about pronouns.