Worse than guilded age.

[Zebo]

This is the type of stuff that causes revolutions.

In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970 - 2000. With the lion's share of increased profits going to the CEO's, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.

As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1.


.....

Since the crisis, which has hit the average worker much harder than CEOs, the gap between the top one percent and the remaining 99% of the US population has grown to a record high. The economic top one percent of the population now owns over 70% of all financial assets, an all time record.

..............

During the same time period, the wealth of the 400 richest Americans increased by $30 billion, bringing their total combined wealth to $1.57 trillion, which is more than the combined net worth of 50% of the US population. Just to make this point clear, 400 people have more wealth than 155 million people combined.

---------

Meanwhile, 2009 was a record-breaking year for Wall Street bonuses, as firms issued $150 billion to their executives. 100% of these bonuses are a direct result of our tax dollars, so if we used this money to create jobs, instead of giving them to a handful of top executives, we could have paid an annual salary of $30,000 to 5 million people.

...........

For an example of how this system flows to the Economic Elite, just look at the Wall Street "bailout." The real size of the bailout is estimated to be $14 trillion - and could end up costing trillions more than that. By now you are probably also sick of hearing about the bailout, but stop and think about this for a momentÖ Do you comprehend how much $14 trillion is?

What could be accomplished with this money is almost beyond common comprehension.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg that has hit us. On top of the trillions given to the Wall Street elite, we already have a record $12.3 trillion in national debt - and we now have to pay $500 billion in interest to the Economic Elite on this debt every year, yet another way they are milking us dry. When you add in unfunded liabilities owed, like social security payments, we actually owe a stunning $74 trillion. That adds up to a debt of $242,000 for every man, woman and child in America.

More here http://www.alternet.org/economy/145...s_it_going_to_take_to_get_it_back?page=entire

 

[StageLeft]

I do really find it nothing short of monstrous how some of these financial firms, seemingly so close to the brink they needed literal cash injections from the government, or at least cash injections to firms that owed them money (e.g. AIG), within just a year were in some cases paying out record bonuses.

Now, some of their bonuses are not related to bailouts but rather the sickness that pervades the contemporary American economy.

It's fucking vile. And to add insult to injury nothing has actually been done about them. Not a single piece of impactful legislation has been passed since this began that forces them to operate in substantially different ways. It's such a glaring failure of US government there is no excuse for it.

 

[Craig234]

Thank you for posting some summarized truth, but unfortunately it stops short of helping people realize just how warped power now is, and how fragile ouir democracy of becoming a hollow shell.

It's 'just numbers' when listed, but it's really a lot more, evidence of just how much the egalitarianism important to our country has been abondoned to a new coming 'gilded age'.

Our political system is founded on the theory of representation, but when politicians are hired hands with one responsibility - keep the people fooled from understanding who really has the power - it's broken.

We're not there yet - but we're closer and closer.

And it's a lot harder to fix soon.

The result from these problems isn't fixing it, it's tea parties and destabalization that open the door to even more corrupt, reactionary leaders, fascism, as described in the 1930's "It can't happen here".

Yet so much has to do with simple things - people voting ignorantly and irresponsibly for the 'guy they want to have a beer with' or the winking MILF rogue.

It's up to the people to put a stop to that nonsense, to challenge the corporate media's system for electing whoever can pay for the most ads, as we talk to the people we know, or on the internet.

 

[Soltis]

It's really disheartening to hear about so much money being used just to keep big businesses afloat, and then hearing alot of the money wasn't even used correctly...

Theres so many things that seem messed up its hard to think of where to start fixing it. Probably the first question that came into my mind though was; if CEOs are making so much money, why aren't more people becoming CEOs? lol and I'm not trying to be funny with that.

Companies should always be able to stand on their own merits and trying to fix a company by just giving it more money will probably always end bad since they usually end up collasping due to their own structures and practices and thus cant be fixed unless you fix those first I would think.

It's sad to see these types of statistics where 1% of the people have 50% of the money. I've seen things that say that 80% of Americans have credit card debt. In the end we need more Americans to make more of their own businesses which in itself will create more jobs imo. The CEO seems to be "at the top of the foodchain" in a sense, we need more people to be up there so it isn't as overempowering. It's like when one company is the sole provider in a market, theres no competition in prices. More people making more money = creates more jobs in the process, decreases amount of money gov needs to spend on them, increases amount of money gov can get from them, and the person usually seems to be able to afford more things than if they were on the end where the gov should really be putting most of its help(people on hard times, instead of failing companies)

I'm not experienced in this type of thing but thats just my take on it.

 

[Craig234]

It's really disheartening to hear about so much money being used just to keep big businesses afloat, and then hearing alot of the money wasn't even used correctly...

Theres so many things that seem messed up its hard to think of where to start fixing it. Probably the first question that came into my mind though was; if CEOs are making so much money, why aren't more people becoming CEOs? lol and I'm not trying to be funny with that.

CEOs aren't like doctors or lawyers, they don't scale so easily. THey're heads of major corporations, and there are only so many Fortune 500 CEO positions (in fact, 500 or so).

Note, for all the accurate info on CEO excesses, the more important number is the top 1% owning 70% of all financial assets. That's the permanent 'tax' on your money, the drainig of it by the passive receivers.

CEOs come and go, but the owners' fortunes are not going anywhere.

Companies should always be able to stand on their own merits and trying to fix a company by just giving it more money will probably always end bad since they usually end up collasping due to their own structures and practices and thus cant be fixed unless you fix those first I would think.

There are right and wrong reasons for government to get involved. Unfortunately, the more corrupt things are, the more likely it is done for the wrong.

It's sad to see these types of statistics where 1% of the people have 50% of the money. I've seen things that say that 80% of Americans have credit card debt. In the end we need more Americans to make more of their own businesses which in itself will create more jobs imo. The CEO seems to be "at the top of the foodchain" in a sense, we need more people to be up there so it isn't as overempowering. It's like when one company is the sole provider in a market, theres no competition in prices. More people making more money = creates more jobs in the process, decreases amount of money gov needs to spend on them, increases amount of money gov can get from them, and the person usually seems to be able to afford more things than if they were on the end where the gov should really be putting most of its help(people on hard times, instead of failing companies)

Private debt has grown far MORE than government debt the last 30 years. It's the 'invisible crisis' - and driving the government debt in part.

Business make more short term profits the more people get in debt; government doesn't win elections by tellling business 'no' to making money or people 'no' to the phony lifestyles they borrow.

I'm not experienced in this type of thing but thats just my take on it.

Check my sig for some good reading - commondreams, David Cay Johnston, Paul Krugman etc.

We have big problems and little public level of being informed. There aren't easy answers here.

The people who are best positioned to lead a citizen revolt are the people who will exploit it badly. That's why we have Glenn Beck trying to wear the crown of revolt and not the good leaders who are drowned out.

 

[Soltis]

Thank you for posting some summarized truth, but unfortunately it stops short of helping people realize just how warped power now is, and how fragile ouir democracy of becoming a hollow shell.

It's 'just numbers' when listed, but it's really a lot more, evidence of just how much the egalitarianism important to our country has been abondoned to a new coming 'gilded age'.

Our political system is founded on the theory of representation, but when politicians are hired hands with one responsibility - keep the people fooled from understanding who really has the power - it's broken.

We're not there yet - but we're closer and closer.

And it's a lot harder to fix soon.

The result from these problems isn't fixing it, it's tea parties and destabalization that open the door to even more corrupt, reactionary leaders, fascism, as described in the 1930's "It can't happen here".

Yet so much has to do with simple things - people voting ignorantly and irresponsibly for the 'guy they want to have a beer with' or the winking MILF rogue.

It's up to the people to put a stop to that nonsense, to challenge the corporate media's system for electing whoever can pay for the most ads, as we talk to the people we know, or on the internet.

I definitely agree with this. Too many people only seem to think only of what benefits them in the "now" and what people will fight for their needs, not necessarily what people will fight to keep the country moving forward. The majority is close to uneducated, uninformed, and unmotivated. When people are like this, they tend to listen to what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. I think we have to do what we can to make sure the people closest to us push against this wave, not ride with it.

 

[Jhhnn]

The changes in income and wealth distribution are the direct result of changes in tax policy and investment direction begun during the Reagan years. America's wealthiest have fostered and exploited short sighted greed in the electorate using a variety of deceptions.

And it's not really about the top 1%, but more about the top .1%, and even more importantly, the top .01%. Even the anti-tax foundation has begun to catch on, and now publish figures wrt the top .1%. See table 5, here-

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

The top .1% get over half the income of the top 1%, and it's pretty predictable that the top .01% get half of that, or nearly 6% of all income. That's more than the bottom 25-30% combined.

Increasingly, the rewards of work are degraded by the rewards of investment, and actual investment in productive enterprise in this country is decreasing, has been for 30 years.

Combine increasingly lower tax rates on huge incomes with greater returns from offshoring over the course of 30 years, and what we have now is what any reasonable and intelligent person would have predicted from the outset- extreme concentration of wealth and enormous debt loads among the target population.

And we, the American public, are, indeed, the target population, the source of wealth now being rapidly transferred into the hands of a very, very few.

Warren Buffet put it in very plain terms-

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

 

[shira]

This is the type of stuff that causes revolutions.

More here http://www.alternet.org/economy/145...s_it_going_to_take_to_get_it_back?page=entire

But if we cut tax rates, eliminate taxes on all dividends, and eliminate estate taxes, all will be well.

 

[Jaskalas]

But if we cut tax rates, eliminate taxes on all dividends, and eliminate estate taxes, all will be well.

It would help if we let "too big to fail" actually fail.

 

[Craig234]

It would help if we let "too big to fail" actually fail.

No, it wouldn't - and that's why they know they're safe to take the gambles at our expense.

It would help if we don't let them be too big to fail in the first place, so we CAN let them fail.

 

[Jhhnn]

It would help if we let "too big to fail" actually fail.

You don't quite get it, do you?

The entities that would fail aren't the actual holders of wealth, merely the vehicles they've used to amass it. They get theirs before the failure happens, actually cause it, and in the resulting debt deflation scenario of classic capitalistic boom and bust, their assets translate into liquidity, cash, at a time when cash is King.

The only beating they take is on paper, and the power of wealth is a relative thing. If I start out a billionaire, lose 2/3 of it on paper, but the rest of the world ends up not having a pot to piss in, I'm actually more powerful than I was before...

 

[SlickSnake]

It's now patently obvious to anyone who is not a brain dead fool or a corporate stooge, that you CAN NOT have complete corporate capitalist financial freedom and also expect democracy and personal freedom to flourish for the population as a whole.

The very foundations of the freedom of capitalism and greed that made our country a superpower, are now drowning us in unimaginable debt and taxation and loss of manufacturing and consumer productivity and dragging the country and the people swiftly to the bottom of the financial sinkhole. And almost nobody in government with any decent leadership skills or qualities seems willing or able to sound the alarm bells that the USS DEBT TITANIC is going down, and going down FAST.

The greedy and sinister corporate fatcats slither away from the financial disaster they orchestrated and convert their ill gotten dollars to gold or whatever and flee from the masses, while they secretly wine and dine with Nero in their hidden and gated McMansions while the Rome they helped build, now burns from their greedy financial actions.

While these colorful metaphors don't fix the financial problems, they accurately convey what's happening.

Capitalist greed made this country, and now capitalist greed will destroy us. This is a fundamental human weakness and a deadly flaw in a modern age. In ancient times, greed was a vital survival instinct that might mean our family would survive, while others did not, in times of drought or famine.

But in the modern age, the rules and tools of survival based on currency have greatly changed the game, but not the uncontrollable base instinct of greed. Which in many power mad insane individuals with influence, causes them to irrationally lash out and dominate everyone and everything without reason, even to the point of their own eventual demise by their own hands.

The vast majority of us have been their unwilling pawns to step on and crush to get to the top for so long, that now makes us all their enemies. Which is why they have to tighten their bloody grip on the noose on freedoms neck with increasing corporate fascist tyranny and propaganda.

And trying to mitigate this destructive effect by using politics or the political system which enabled this corporate tyranny in the first place, is kind of like trying to save a drowning man by holding him underwater.

I wish I had an easy solution for this unavoidable financial downfall and simultaneous rise of fascist tyranny. But unless mankind as a whole suddenly wakes up from his neanderthal slumber, we are all screwed. And no amount of praying to imaginary Gods to save us, or voting for one party or another is going to fix this mess. We are hard wired genetically for GREED, and greed will destroy us and our civilization before war, famine, disease or an asteroid from space ever will.

So enjoy the financial roller coaster ride while it lasts, because we are almost at the end of it, and there are no more tracks that I can see leading back up from the absolute bottom of it, and the brakes don't work.

 

[Jaskalas]

I do find it strange to walk into a thread on wealth concentration where I suggest pulling the plug on tax payers funding it, and you scatter for the hills and sling mud on the idea.

The system is bad... so lets prop up the system? *boggle* I suggest unplugging it.

 

[Moonbeam]

Self hate means that people who are getting fucked want to be fucked and like it. The fucked have a fucked mentality. They feel they deserve to be fucked. You can change everything and it will quickly revert back to just what is. Until people realize there is nothing wrong with them, that their self hate is a lie, the way things are will stay the same. When people, and that isn't going to happen any time I can see, get fed up enough with fucking themselves, then and only then will they have any hope.

 

[BrownTown]

The top .1% get over half the income of the top 1%, and it's pretty predictable that the top .01% get half of that, or nearly 6% of all income. That's more than the bottom 25-30% combined.

The bottom 20% live off the government like leaches, the fact that they get ANYTHING is purely out of the kindness of other peopls hearts. I assure you the top .01% of the people in this country have alot more positive impact than the bottom 20% (TBH they are a serious net negative).

 

[spittledip]

Self hate means that people who are getting fucked want to be fucked and like it. The fucked have a fucked mentality. They feel they deserve to be fucked. You can change everything and it will quickly revert back to just what is. Until people realize there is nothing wrong with them, that their self hate is a lie, the way things are will stay the same. When people, and that isn't going to happen any time I can see, get fed up enough with fucking themselves, then and only then will they have any hope.

Those CEOs seem to like themselves pretty much the way they pay themselves.

 

[spittledip]

The bottom 20% live off the government like leaches, the fact that they get ANYTHING is purely out of the kindness of other peopls hearts. I assure you the top .01% of the people in this country have alot more positive impact than the bottom 20% (TBH they are a serious net negative).

That is assuming the top .01% pay what they "owe"

 

[Special K]

This is the type of stuff that causes revolutions.



More here http://www.alternet.org/economy/145...s_it_going_to_take_to_get_it_back?page=entire

Honestly as long as people can still buy food and have TV for entertainment, I doubt there will ever be any sort of true revolution no matter how big of a wealth disparity there is.

If it weren't for the internet, would the average citizen even know or care how big the wealth disparity was, or how much more CEOs make now relative to the company's average employee?

 

[Rainsford]

I do find it strange to walk into a thread on wealth concentration where I suggest pulling the plug on tax payers funding it, and you scatter for the hills and sling mud on the idea.

The system is bad... so lets prop up the system? *boggle* I suggest unplugging it.

The problem is that tax payers are funding incompetence on a company by company basis, it has nothing to do with wealth concentration. As far as I'm aware, companies run into the ground by morons have pretty much the same statistics in terms of who makes the real money as companies that do alright.

I don't think wealth concentration helps or hurts individual companies, it's a problem with the entire system.

 

[spittledip]

This is the type of stuff that causes revolutions.



More here http://www.alternet.org/economy/145...s_it_going_to_take_to_get_it_back?page=entire

You have to consider that these CEOs and the boards of the companies all swim in the same pool and all do each other favors. Taht is how this stuff happens. I do not like this type of garbage, but you see this type of behavior at every level of a company's hierarchy. People create networks to benefit themselves using the "I scratch your back you scratch mine" mentality. The only difference is that it is very very noticeable with figures like the ones you posted.

What this means is that if we all play the game, we are all guilty. If you don't play the game, good for you! You will have to do well by working hard or getting lucky instead of cozying up to "the right people." Or maybe you won't do well... Of course this does help to expose that big America lie: work hard and blah blah blah and everything will be great for you! This is not to say you shouldn't work hard, this is to say that you need to keep your expectations realistic. Of course we are speaking in generalizations here. Not all companies run this way.

 

[spittledip]

Honestly as long as people can still buy food and have TV for entertainment, I doubt there will ever be any sort of true revolution no matter how big of a wealth disparity there is.

I agree.

 

[Atreus21]

I do find it strange to walk into a thread on wealth concentration where I suggest pulling the plug on tax payers funding it, and you scatter for the hills and sling mud on the idea.

The system is bad... so lets prop up the system? *boggle* I suggest unplugging it.

Absolutely.

I have a question. How do these CEOs make so much money?

 

[IronWing]

Absolutely.

I have a question. How do these CEOs make so much money?

Corporate ownership is diffuse, spread out among individuals, mutual funds, retirement systems, etc. so the boards don't feel any particular obligation to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to the owners. "Why not give the CEO a few million more? It ain't my money and he might do the same for me someday when I land a CEO gig somewhere."

 

[Atreus21]

Corporate ownership is diffuse, spread out among individuals, mutual funds, retirement systems, etc. so the boards don't feel any particular obligation to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities to the owners. "Why not give the CEO a few million more? It ain't my money and he might do the same for me someday when I land a CEO gig somewhere."

I think any corporation who casually throws around millions of dollars without merit won't last long.

Unless they keep being bailed out.

 

[Craig234]

I think any corporation who casually throws around millions of dollars without merit won't last long.

Unless they keep being bailed out.

History shows you not to be right about that. The CEO compensation has been corrupted and graeatly increased in the US fo rthat reason - waste - while it hasn't caised bailouts for that reason.