Is your minimum wage too low? This man has a unique idea to get paid more at work

The median CEO pay hit a whopping $16.3 million or nearly 200 times the typical worker’s wages last year, as per data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. The CEO pay gap has increasingly become a bigger issue for the world and Americans who have advocated for measures to put a cap on the highest salaries. A similar argument was presented on TikTok by creator Kabba Gabba (@nobinariodeoro), who suggested that tying the highest and the lowest pay of a company will do more good than fighting for a higher minimum wage. 

Lower the highest pay instead of raising the minimum wage

In the video, which now has over 2.6 million views, Gabba argues that people should focus their efforts on exposing and weaponizing corporate greed instead of fighting for higher wages. 

"Fight to lower the maximum wage," Gabba says in the video. Further arguing his case, he says fighting for higher wages isn't going to do any good. Instead, people should focus their efforts on forcing corporations to tie their highest pay with their lowest pay. 

He suggests that there should be a compensation cap under which every corporation's highest pay should be no more than 10 times the company's lowest-paid employee. He says people should force companies to make the argument that "even 10 times the lowest pay is still too low." This is essential to show companies the extent of disparity in their pay.

He argues that it also hits the rich where it hurts and it may be more effective in forcing them to take action. "If 1000 employees lose their homes, the rich man celebrates. If that same rich man loses a dollar, he is grief-stricken," the creator wrote in the caption. 

Viewers of the video lauded Gabba's proposal and threw their support behind him. "And if/when there are record profits, the company needs to share it with ALL employees," added user, @gingersnapped_01. In the comments, Gabba further argued that people should make companies argue that $150 per hour is too low. 

However, one user rightfully suggested that the CEO pay on average was much more. "I must be too nice. I thought 100X. Considering it is 350-400x now. You make a good point," suggested user @butchknotwell203. 

The problem of CEO Pay Gap

As per the Equilar report, it would take a typical employee about 196 years to make as much as their CEO made in 2023.  While it is instinctively unfair, the CEO pay gap continues to widen further. 

And yet the gap between CEOs and workers is widening. The issue is occupying the mind space of Americans too. As per exclusive data from a Bentley University-Gallup poll shared with CNN, over 8 in 10 citizens think it's important for businesses to avoid a major pay gap between employees and CEOs. About 56% of the respondents further suggested that the issue is  “extremely important.

Thus, earlier this year, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders along with Democratic lawmakers proposed a bill to raise taxes for companies that pay their CEOs over 50 times their typical worker's salary.  

The union-backed proposal put forward a tax raise of 0.5 percentage points on companies whose CEO-to-worker salary ratio was above 50 to 1. For companies that paid their top executives over 500 times the proposed tax penalty is of 5 percentage points.

The bill needs 60 votes to clear the Senate and is likely to face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, as per Reuters. However, the measure is far less radical than what Gabba proposes. 

For more such videos, follow Kabba Gabba (@nobinariodeoro) on TikTok.