Read Bob Herbert today! Then take a look at the Kerry proposal to "fix" issues with corporations ...
From today's (excellent!) Bob Herbert:
"What is happening is nothing short of historic. The American workers' share of the increase in national income since November 2001, the end of the last recession, is the lowest on record. Employers took the money and ran. This is extraordinary, but very few people are talking about it, which tells you something about the hold that corporate interests have on the national conversation.
The situation is summed up in the long, unwieldy but very revealing title of a new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University: "The Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits and the Simultaneous Ebbing of Labor Compensation - Gainers and Losers from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003."
Andrew Sum, the center's director and lead author of the study, said: "This is the first time we've ever had a case where two years into a recovery, corporate profits got a larger share of the growth of national income than labor did. Normally labor gets about 65 percent and corporate profits about 15 to 18 percent. This time profits got 41 percent and labor [meaning all forms of employee compensation, including wages, benefits, salaries and the percentage of payroll taxes paid by employers] got 38 percent."
The study said: "In no other recovery from a post-World War II recession did corporate profits ever account for as much as 20 percent of the growth in national income. And at no time did corporate profits ever increase by a greater amount than labor compensation."
In other words, an awful lot of American workers have been had. Fleeced. Taken to the cleaners.
The recent productivity gains have been widely acknowledged. But workers are not being compensated for this. During the past two years, increases in wages and benefits have been very weak, or nonexistent. And despite the growth of jobs in March that had the Bush crowd dancing in the White House halls last Friday, there has been no net increase in formal payroll employment since the end of the recession. We have lost jobs. There are fewer payroll jobs now than there were when the recession ended in November 2001.
So if employers were not hiring workers, and if they were miserly when it came to increases in wages and benefits for existing employees, what happened to all the money from the strong economic growth?
The study is very clear on this point. The bulk of the gains did not go to workers, "but instead were used to boost profits, lower prices, or increase C.E.O. compensation.""
We have all heard "Big John" talking a lot about "standing up for the little guy" and taking on "Benedict Arnold CEO's". And we see from Herbert's writing that studies are showing that the CEO's are a big problem. The trouble is, the Democratic candidate (presumptive) has actually proposed no CONCRETE, NON-RHETORICAL POLICY to date on what to DO about inequitable upwards wealth redistribution other than ... get this ... cutting the corporate tax rates!!!
Who's the Benedict Arnold here? The CEO's, or John Kerry? At least the CEO's don't claim to be standing up to the little guy. As I recall, the thing that made Benedict Arnold a traitor was not that he was serving the other side but that he lied about it. That's what makes a traitor: not so much serving the enemy as lying about it.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled echo chamber, which I have not viewed for over a month. Talk to you in another month or two or three ...