My featured article was getting too damn long, so I left this chart out of the article. It tells the story of the ruling elite looting and pillaging the middle class of this country. The average CEO’s pay has gone up 300% over a 15 year period, while the average working schmuck’s pay has gone up 4.3% over the same time period. The free market capitalists out there will claim that the CEOs have created more shareholder value and deserve every penny they get.
Did Jeff Immelt increase shareholder value at GE?
Did Angelo Mozilo increase shareholder value at Countrywide?
Did Charlie Prince increase shareholder value at Citicorp?
Did Ken Lewis increase shareholder value at Bank of America?
Did Ken Lay increase sharholder value at Enron?
You get my point. The CEOs of American conglomerates have destroyed wealth in this country, shipped American jobs overseas, and have paid themselves billions for a job well done. Below is a section of William Danhoff’s fantastic article – Who Rules America – http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html.
The median compensation for CEO’s in all industries as of early 2010 is $3.9 million; it’s $10.6 million for the companies listed in Standard and Poor’s 500, and $19.8 million for the companies listed in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. Since the median worker’s pay is about $36,000, then you can quickly calculate that CEOs in general make 100 times as much as the workers, that CEO’s of S&P 500 firms make almost 300 times as much, and that CEOs at the Dow-Jones companies make 550 times as much.
If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select — and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit — gives them the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called “compensation consultants,” who give the process a thin veneer of economic respectability.
Figure 9: CEOs’ average pay, production workers’ average pay, the S&P 500 Index, corporate profits, and the federal minimum wage, 1990-2005 (all figures adjusted for inflation)
Source: Executive Excess 2006, the 13th Annual CEO Compensation Survey from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
cv51 says:
Admin has that been parralled with inflation?
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31st January 2011 at 11:35 am
cv51 says:
Whoops missed it. Sorry
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31st January 2011 at 11:36 am
Administrator says:
Those figures are inflation adjusted, using the government reported inflation. Use real inflation and the average schmuck’s wages are 20% lower.
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31st January 2011 at 11:46 am
bluestem says:
Hey, I want to be a CEO! Where do I sign up? All I need is a one year stint, and I will happily resign under the best of circumstances, promise. John
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31st January 2011 at 11:49 am
KaD says:
And yet we still hear the cry going on about the rich paying too much in taxes. People like this belong in jail. Iceland did so.
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31st January 2011 at 12:23 pm
flash says:
GB expresses via song my sentiments exactly.
Gene Burnett – Jump You F*#kers (A Song For Wall Street)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yge311sFhC8
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31st January 2011 at 12:25 pm
Thunderbird says:
Our greatest men have crinimal minds that were educated in our best universities so they demand the best pay. Who says that crime does not pay well?
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31st January 2011 at 12:49 pm
TeresaE says:
Yet we sheeple continue to utilize their products, thus enabling, hell encouraging, this behavior.
Until we the people band together, do away with a few of our modern conveniences and quit supporting the very evil we love to whine about, NOTHING is going to change. Well, until it has to.
It cracks me up to hear people bemoan that their are no good jobs, bemoan that all their crap is made in China and bemoan the big banks, then I go to their homes and see cupboards full of Walmart brand goods, purchased using their Bank of America debit card.
This is what leads me to despair our future. Knowing human behavior, I also know their is no fucking way anything is going to change. Things will just keep getting harder until one day we wake up and no longer remember our former lifestyles and liberties.
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31st January 2011 at 1:04 pm
llpoh says:
Admin – The last time I posted about the role of CEO’s was to increase shareholder value (referencing Welsh, I believe), you slapped the crap out of me and said something to the contrary.
Now you use the same point to make this argument.
I expect now that I have pointed this out you will twist everything again to make it seem like you in fact are consistent and not wont to swing in the breeze as the mood takes you. Phhhth.
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31st January 2011 at 5:52 pm
Administrator says:
llpoh
You don’t get sarcasm, do you?
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31st January 2011 at 8:21 pm
llpoh says:
Admin – I am too stupid to get sarcasm. Also, being married, I long ago turned off my sarcasm receptor as a survival mechanism (ie when my wife goes ” you did a really good job with the dishes” I simply respond thank you, dear.).
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31st January 2011 at 8:28 pm
marissa says:
Crap. I only got to vote thumbs up once for the placard photo of “Jump You Fuckers”.
I want to vote yes again. And again.
How does one rig this website for a multiple of votes?
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31st January 2011 at 6:29 am