High executive pay and scrumptious bonuses, "golden parachutes."
Failing companies.
Oh yeah, who gets that high executive pay, those lovely bonuses, who is handed the "golden parachute"?
Almost by decree, you got to be white. You got to be male.
It’s hard to square the conceit that chief executives are rewarded for improving companies’ performance with the fact that chiefs at 10 financial-services firms in the study made $320 million last year, even as their banks reported mortgage-related losses of $55 billion.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Ah, those golden Bush years. So much accomplished. So, so:
Meanwhile, the average earnings of typical workers have failed to keep up with inflation in four of the past five years. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, average incomes in the highest-earning 1 percent of the United States grew 11 percent year-over-year between 2002 and 2006. Incomes in the bottom 99 percent grew by 0.9 percent annually over the period. This year looks bad, too.
To repeat, between 2002 and 2006, right smack in the midst of the golden Bush years, incomes in the top one percent in terms of wealth of our population grew by eleven percent. Us suckers who reside in the lower 99%, we got 9 tenths of one percent divvied out to us.
The fairness doctrine at play in the corporate world.
The One-Percenters, who don't need it, they get 11 percent more.
The 99-Percents, that's you and me, who really need more bucks to pay off mortgages, dental bills, save money for our kids to go to college, the usual grocery list of basic needs for the common folk -- food, shelter, medical care, education -- we get a measly .9 of 1%. Maybe they'll get real generous next year and give us a whole one percent.
Meanwhile, what about these puppies:
The quarter billion $$$ guy:
All Told, the Price Tag for Citigroup’s New Chief Is $216 Million
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Vikram S. Pandit of Citigroup.
Or the guy at Blackstone:
Blackstone’s Chief Received $350 Million in Pay in 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Chairman and chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman.
Now, when you get to be at that level, you get to toss terms around like "base pay," which usually ain't very base at all, cash bonuses," well, I got a Ben Franklin once for Christmas from an insurance company -- but that was before the big Enron bust, "perks" and other sundry stuff -- moving expenses, the use of corporate jets, a hired limo or two, your "cash pay" which is the sum total of your base pay, your cash bonuses, your perks, then you've got your "stock awards" and your "option awards" and you add that all together and you get your "total compensation amount," which makes even the sum total of everything I've earned in my lifetime amount to a tiny pile of beans.
Please, just a moment of silence while we reflect on the words of John Edwards on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal back on January 2 of this year:
My Plan to Stop Corporate Abuses By JOHN EDWARDS
The basic bargain of America -- that everyone should have a chance to work hard and build a better future -- is falling apart. Families are working longer hours, but skyrocketing education and health-care costs, the foreclosure crisis and stagnant incomes have made it harder for working Americans to provide a better future for their children.
Not everyone in America is struggling. Investors on Wall Street took home a record-setting $38 billion in bonuses this past year, even after losing millions in the credit meltdown.
In 1960, the average CEO made 41 times what the average worker made. But in 2005, the average CEO made over 400 times the average worker's salary. The share of corporate profits going to CEO pay has doubled since the 1990s. Meanwhile, the value of the minimum wage has plummeted 30% since 1979....
John, John, John, we miss ye so much!