I decided to do a little research:Sniper Team 4 said:Perhaps you could take a pay cut yourself first, Mr. CEO? How much money do you make a year again? More than probably every single one of your employees combined will see in their lifetime? Or perhaps you could maybe raise the price of a few items by a few cents? A dime might not seem like much by itself, but if you 5,000 of them, that's $50,000.
Pretty sure it's statements like this that lead to the whole, "We are the 99%!" movement. This guy comes off as an ass. No one--except other well-off 'I-have-so-much-money-I-could-never-spend-it-all-but-I-want-MORE!' people--is going to feel sorry for this guy. He's complaining about paying people while it sits in a corner greedily hoarding his wealth.
-Andy Puzder (the Carl's Jr. CEO) makes about $4.5 million in salary (before taxes)
-The highest US tax bracket is 39%, so it means after income taxes, Puzder takes home $2,745,000/year.
-Carl's Jr. has about 1356 locations worldwide.
-I couldn't find exact employment numbers, but the average fast food joint has 15.71 employees, so 15.71x1356=21,303 Carl's Jr. fast food workers.
-$2,745,000/21,303=$128.85.
-A person making minimum wage ($7.25) working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year brings home $15,080.
In other words, if the CEO of Carl's Jr. gave away every penny of his salary after taxes to his low-level employees, his employees would get a whopping $129 more each year. That's an increase of 0.008%.
Saying he should "take a pay cut" is a cop-out, it would do essentially nothing.