There has been a lot of very justified praise for Jim Webb's speech in reply to the decider's State of the Union address. People have rightly lauded Webb as an individual, as a speaker, and as a vigorous spokesman for Democratic positions. However, while pundits and news reports are quick to pick up on Webb's critique of Bush's rush to war and mismanagement of the aftermath, they've spent less time discussing the issue at the very heart of Webb's speech: the economic divisions in America.
When one looks at the health of our economy, it's almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it's nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.
This disparity, the one that allows Bush to state in his own speech that the economy is "growing" and "on the move," is all too apparent in the lives of most people. American workers are not blind to the widening gap between those who work, and those who rule the corpocracy. In my own working life, I can say that once I cleared college, I felt very happy to find myself making $18,000 a year. This was more than two decades ago, and at the time the president of the company earned just under $300,000 a year -- a ratio of less than twenty to one. Move forward to today. I've been lucky enough to meet with modest advancement, after working through classes in night school and moving up several times in rank. And at the end of that time, the ratio between myself and the top of the company is now 485 to 1. By mid-afternoon on January 1st, my boss has earned my salary for the year.
This expansion of the gap hasn't happened for just those toiling on assembly lines, working in fields, or laboring in construction. It's just as true for highly educated workers working in information, and for managers short of the golden ring. In every industry, the gap between the highest level of management and everyone not on that plane, has grown to astounding levels -- a disparity not seen in any other industrialized nation.
This is one issue on which you found zero mention of a "bipartisan" effort in Bush's speech. That's because Republicans have no concern for the looting of America. They don't even see it as an issue. We may regard Bush as living in a fantasy world, a place where the harsh realities of life rarely intrude, but this is equally true, if not more so, of those at the top of the economic ladder.
As an example of this inequality, look no further than Ford Motor Company. Just this week, Ford announced a staggering $12.7 billion loss the highest in company history. This came after a year in which the company announced that it was cutting more than 40,000 jobs (30,000 of them union jobs). So what to do in a company that's failed to delivered innovative products to the market, completely misjudged consumer trends, and managed itself into a fiscal bind that will see if fall from the "big three" of automakers? Why first you blame much of your problems on the health care cost of the line workers. Then you award bonuses to the top management.
Mulally also confirmed that Ford is considering giving performance bonuses to its top executives at the same time it is incurring massive losses, closing plants and cutting jobs.
"More of the compensation of senior leadership is tied to their performance," he said. "This team has made great progress. You have to keep the talented people you really need."
That's corporate fantasyland for you, a land where those at the top are always worth millions, no matter how they've performed, bonuses for mediocre work exceed the price of the average home, and regular folks can be discarded as cost-cutting moves. Back to Jim Webb's speech:
In short, the middle class of this country, our historic backbone and our best hope for a strong society in the future, is losing its place at the table. Our workers know this, through painful experience. Our white-collar professionals are beginning to understand it, as their jobs start disappearing also. And they expect, rightly, that in this age of globalization, their government has a duty to insist that their concerns be dealt with fairly in the international marketplace.