Paul Ryan
(Image by expressmilwaukee.com)
The good news is that all but the laziest Americans are back in the green now that the economy is going full steam ahead again after a few months of modest cutting back on luxuries. Not only do we have job offers coming out of our ears, but also thanks to the mere arrival of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, it seems nearly everybody is getting a raise. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Take a look, for instance, at USA Today's study of 175 typical Americans.
• Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman took home a $2.65 million in salary, $11.25 million in bonus, and $70.45 million in stock options for total compensation of $84,469,515. That's up 148 percent since 2009.
• Stanley Black & Decker CEO John Lundgren received total compensation of $32,570,596, up 253 percent from two years ago.
• Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg got $17,901,396, a mere 5.2 percent increase over 2009.
• U.S. Bankcorp CEO Richard Davis was paid a total of $16,104,276, a 143 percent increase. But then he triples as President and Chairman of the Board.
• Adobe Systems CEO Shantanu Narayen also increased his compensation by 143 percent, for a total of $12,228,214.
All told, these 175 Americans selected by USA Today made $1.84 billion in 2010. The median compensation was $8.8 million, a 26 percent rise over 2009.
But that, as Kyle Daly at the Colorado Independent points out, wasn't even the best of the good news. A survey of 25 other typical Americans found that they split $22.07 billion among themselves.
And this fantabuous turnabout in the economy doesn't end there. The average pay increase for all U.S. workers who had jobs in private industry for the same period was 2.1 percent, making it far easier to pay for that $4 gasoline we've got now. So, despite all the crap you've heard from the rabble, trickle-down does work.
Now it's true that some people didn't have jobs, so they didn't get raises. But Rep. Paul Ryan (WI-01) has a fix for that. Even though $8.8 million may seem a reasonable haul, it's really not enough, in Ryan's view, to guarantee our long-term prosperity. Not when you have to turn nearly 35 percent of it over to the federal government. If more of that money remained in private hands, so the Congressman says, it would be invested, which would produce more jobs and more raises. What a perfect mesh.
Ryan's solution: a 29 percent income tax cut to bring the top marginal rate down to 25 percent instead of the draconian 35 percent bracket first imposed by the closet socialist Ronald Reagan. This will have the added benefit of requiring a few cuts in the federal budget. Programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Pell Grants, heating assistance for the poor, all of them frills, really.
Grover Norquist must be chuckling to the duckies in his bathtub.