Opinion | The Wealthy Steal, Too — Just Differently

In 1965, C.E.O.s were paid 21 times the average worker. In 2024, C.E.O.s are paid 281 times the average worker. I feel some of this is coming from a feeling of, like, the rules are — the social contract is broken. And then there’s also the slippery slope of what happens if we completely break the social contract and no one plays by the rules anymore. And I wonder where you two see the interplay of those two ideas. Well, the rules are already designed in a way where if you steal from the poor, you become rich. If you steal from the wealthy, you go to prison. So there’s only one direction where you can do unlimited theft and erode the social contract for the 99 percent. There’s an invisibility baked into the system that allows the wealthy to engage in this sort of behavior, because, I mean, it’s a cliche at this point, but wage theft is the most consequential amount of theft that takes place in the United States of America. I mean, the 1 percent, the top 1 percent of Americans, 20 percent of their income is withdrawn from, is withheld from reporting every year. Like it’s just a standing statistic. And that’s not even a corporate structure. That’s not even, I mean, that’s just ordinary rich people.