March 11, 2026
Taking Aim at Overpaid CEOs
Landmark San Francisco and Los Angeles ballot initiatives aim to hike taxes on corporations with huge gaps between CEO and worker pay.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
The espresso machine in Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol’s personal office in Newport Beach, California, retails for $14,000—almost as much as the $14,674 annual wage of the coffee giant’s median worker, a part-time barista.
In other words, nearly half of Starbucks’s 361,000 employees would have to spend every dime they make over an entire year to buy just one of these deluxe caffeine-delivery systems. 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.
So go the absurdities of our ever more unequal world.
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Read the full article on The Nation.
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