Right, recall the phrase 'bread and circuses'. You modernize it, 'food and tv'.
They don't now. Especially with the media so dominated by big corporate ownership.
Right, recall the phrase 'bread and circuses'. You modernize it, 'food and tv'.
They don't now. Especially with the media so dominated by big corporate ownership.
You're a victim of ideology.
I'll try to help you get that a little by the analogy of considering that in Soveiet Russia, the most wealthy party officials 'had a lot more positive impact' than the bottom 20% of society - just ask the communists.
It was in fromt of their eyes. The party officials were the ones organizing industries that provided millions of jobs, while the bottom 20% offered little.
But, you want to protest, how much were the top party officials doing things in their own interests, pursuing agendas not great for society, causing waste, themselves 'leeching off the public'?
Getting the point yet? While the bottom 20% opportunity - which could at least be employed generally in the Soviet Union - are affected by the system with stuctural unemployment here for many.
Where do the top 0.1% get their money? From the rest of society.
The thing is, like good communists, you are not informed of the ways in which those at the top can LEECH rather than 'contribute'.
Now, the two are not mutually exclusive - the top 0.1% can both contribute and leech. I think the trends of income and wealth show they are generally dong more leeching than contrbution, but doing both.
In Europe, companies have similarly performed to the US the last few decades IIRC, while the same trends for skyrocketing CEO compensation and transfer of wealth have not happened.
Ultimately, an excessive concentration of capital reduces the productivity of the nation while allowing the few with the capital to benefit greatly by owning more and more, while poverty increases.
shira
Diamond Member
- Jan 12, 2005
- 9,500
- 6
- 81
The amazing thing about the tea partyers and the rest of the conservative hoi polloi is that the right-wing elite have got them so thoroughly bamboozled that the more un- and under-employed, in-debt, frustrated, and angry they become, the more they scream for yet another round of the same policies (lower taxes, de-regulation of big business, less government programs for the common person) perpetrated on them by Republican administrations since 1981, policies that have pushed them further and further down the economic ladder and correspondingly increased the fraction of the total economy in the hands of the few.
The "trickle down" the tea partyers are so convinced will occur if only "big government" just lets the big boys be all-American entrepreneurs, is actually just a warm and ever-more-copious urine stream raining down on them from the ivory towers.
Soltis
Member
- Mar 2, 2010
- 114
- 0
- 0
It sounds weird to say in a sense, but it seems like Americans don't even live in the "real" world anymore. In the real world, you don't make money = you don't eat, you don't watch TV, you don't go to the movies. In the real world, you can't afford something = you don't get that something. Many Americans(even relatives of mine) in their life between the ages of 1 to 50 haven't worked for more than a combined total of 6 months(some none at all), yet they have food, they have TV(cable), they have housing, they go to the movies, they can get the new ipod, they can get the new PS3 or 360. Some may ask, how is this possible? the gov gives them money, food stamps, and housing, and their credit is shot. The truth is probably about 20% of Americans live this way, and another good 50% or so have jobs, but live above their means and inevitably fall on hard times with debt.
I would say I live a pretty comfortable life. My mom basically raised me and my brother on her own, and about a year ago she told me how much shes makes in average every year(shes a licensed vocational nurse and me and my brother just started college), which was about $34,000. When I heard this I was shocked. One reason being because if she could go back to school for about a year more she could double that by becoming an RN(registered nurse). Another being I always thought you needed to make millions or at least hundreds of thousands to live even a decent life. Now my mom has some amount of debt in her name, a large part comming from the fact she was raised to believe you run from your debts and always avoid talking to the people you owe. But she has never been on any type of monthly aid from the gov. apart from when she was on welfare for 9 months while going to nursing school and pregnant with my older brother(my family was actually upset when she canceled it after getting a job). So at least me personally would be able to live a great life making even 60,000 a year or so(and I'm sure in the process I would be doing more to get rid of gov debt than at least 35% of Americans).
Hearing about how the top 500 people in the world have so much money is sad, but we all know part of that is because nearly everyone(even people without jobs) in this country never stop trying to live above their means. A man would rather go buy some new shoes and a video game before dealing with debt. As long as the majority of people put more into spending money than creating money or lowering debt, there will probably always be a minority that gets most of the money they're spending. That's just my take on it anyway.
I would say I live a pretty comfortable life. My mom basically raised me and my brother on her own, and about a year ago she told me how much shes makes in average every year(shes a licensed vocational nurse and me and my brother just started college), which was about $34,000. When I heard this I was shocked. One reason being because if she could go back to school for about a year more she could double that by becoming an RN(registered nurse). Another being I always thought you needed to make millions or at least hundreds of thousands to live even a decent life. Now my mom has some amount of debt in her name, a large part comming from the fact she was raised to believe you run from your debts and always avoid talking to the people you owe. But she has never been on any type of monthly aid from the gov. apart from when she was on welfare for 9 months while going to nursing school and pregnant with my older brother(my family was actually upset when she canceled it after getting a job). So at least me personally would be able to live a great life making even 60,000 a year or so(and I'm sure in the process I would be doing more to get rid of gov debt than at least 35% of Americans).
Hearing about how the top 500 people in the world have so much money is sad, but we all know part of that is because nearly everyone(even people without jobs) in this country never stop trying to live above their means. A man would rather go buy some new shoes and a video game before dealing with debt. As long as the majority of people put more into spending money than creating money or lowering debt, there will probably always be a minority that gets most of the money they're spending. That's just my take on it anyway.
The saddest part of it all is that you seem to actually believe that.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, but seem to be so insecure that you must find a way to look down on others.
The notion that 1 in 5 adults of working age leech off the govt is absurdly self serving and judgmental, something I'm sure you're pretty much incapable of appreciating. I challenge you to prove it, confident that it's totally impossible, because it's simply not true.
alkemyst
No Lifer
- Feb 13, 2001
- 83,769
- 19
- 81
you have been duped. At the same time probably among the bottom 20% sadly and don't realize it.
SlickSnake
Diamond Member
- May 29, 2007
- 5,235
- 2
- 0
This article adds significantly to this topic, and the book sounds like a good read, so I reposted this excerpt here, for those too lazy to click a link.
http://www.rense.com/general90/newmon.htm
Barry C. Lynn's 'Cornered - The New Monopoly
Capitalism And The Economics Of Destruction'[SIZE=+1]
By Stephen Lendman 3-6-10[/SIZE]
Lynn is director of the Markets, Enterprise, and Resiliency Initiative, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and author of "Too Big to Fail" about the dangers of monopoly capitalism. He expands on the threat in his newest book titled, "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," explaining today's peril given the power of predatory giants.
They control governments, the courts, war and peace, dominant information sources, and essential services, including health care, air and water, what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, and school curricula to the highest levels. They own genetic code patents, basic human life elements to be commodified the same as toothpaste, tomatoes or toilet paper.
Omnipotent, they plunder recklessly, ruthlessly at our expense. They're private tryannies, endangering humanity, basic freedoms, environmental sustainability, and planetary survival. Without exaggeration, they're unaccountable, unchecked "weapons of mass destruction."
In "Cornered," Lynn explains the danger and urgency to address it. Our lives and futures depend on it.
It might have been different had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison prevailed over John Adams and Alexander Hamilton in crafting America's Bill of Rights. They wanted 12, not 10, including "freedom from a permanent military (and) monopolies in commerce."
Imagine the possibilities had they prevailed, or if early leaders agreed with Jefferson in 1816, seven years after his presidency, saying in a letter to a friend: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Earlier, he opposed chartering the first Bank of the United States, a 19th century version of today's central bank, what Andrew Jackson called a "hydra-headed monster," and Lincoln described as predatory money powers "more despotic than a monarch, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy."
He feared they'd accumulate enough wealth and power to destroy the Republic, similar to former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis' view saying, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can't have both."
Others call it fascism or a reasonable facsimile with elements including:
-- the despotic union of corporate and state power - aka corporatism;
-- rampant corruption;
-- the disdain for human rights, civil liberties, and ordinary workers;
-- the dominance of militarism, belligerency, and permanent wars;
-- fraudulent elections;
-- an obsession with national security;
-- the control of public information; and
-- the omnipotence of corporate giants, taking full advantage to pillage and profiteer.
Lynn's book tells why, beginning in his preface titled, "Of Rule and Ruin," saying he warned about monopolization dangers because: "our political economy is run by a compact elite that is able to fuse the power of our public government with the power of private corporate governments in ways that enable members of the elite (to freely decide) who wins, who loses, and who pays."
His book is "a chronicle of a death foretold, and the corpse on the street (is) the American Republic."
Consolidated corporate power and the political complicity behind it means monopolists run the country and the world, justifying it as free-market fundamentalism - a corrupted deception masking predatory dominance that destroys democratic freedoms.
Ronald Reagan accelerated it when government stopped enforcing antitrust laws, and encouraged consolidation, production outsourcing, destruction of America's manufacturing base, the offshoring of high-paying jobs, financialization's ascendency and power of Wall Street, and the ability of corporate predators to break the law and get away with it, today more than ever under Obama.
Lynn calls his book "a sort of tour of monopoly in all its many guises, in the United States today....how monopolists rip us off as consumers, raising the prices we must pay" for everything including essentials becoming more unaffordable.
He covers new monopoly forms and others thought long ago vanished. Understanding them is key to knowing the dangers, from phenomena including:-- problems launching and successfully running a small business;
-- good jobs disappearing, replaced by low-paying service ones with few benefits;
-- the destruction of organized labor, aided by corrupted union bosses;
-- skyrocketing medical costs;
-- blocking efficient, low cost technologies that hurt profits;
-- low quality food, drugs and other products;
-- the burgeoning national debt and current account deficit; and
-- corporatization's corrupting dominance heading American toward despotism with governments as willing partners.
The auto industry is instructive, Lynn saying it "resembles the Hydra, the many-headed monster from Greek mythology." Like their heads relying on one body, the automakers "increasingly rely on a single common body of companies that supply the same components to all of them." In today's hard times, they stand or fall together, governments facilitating consolidation and bailing out the majors, or in other words, socializing risks, privatizing profits, and doing it for other endangered sectors, Wall Street getting the most by far from a privatized central bank they own and US Treasury they control.
Lynn structures his book in three parts:
-- examples of monopolies and the fallout from unrestrained corporate dominance;
-- the effects on ordinary people; and
-- how it affects other systems - ones in place "to protect peaceful international relations, our knowledge of how to make the products and grow the foods we need, and our political institutions."
Combined, he reveals a neofeudalist system of vast size and power, dominating all major American and global industries, consolidating for greater strength, partnered with governments, operating ruthlessly, crushing competition, exploiting workers, and colluding for greater control, the public welfare be damned.
Without antitrust enforcement, monopoly options include:
-- home-based ones to build a power base to capture global markets;
-- pincer ones - "One of the oldest techniques for capturing and protecting monopoly positions" by controlling related activities, then using them to consolidate and crush competition;
-- trading ones that rely on offshore suppliers, investing instead in marketing and strategic alliances for greater market share;
-- middleman ones to build power positions between producers and end users;
-- privatized public monopolies - the simplest, fastest way to create private ones;
-- leapfrog ones by repackaging old businesses in new technologies to escape government oversight; -- futures ones so financiers can dominate trading markets for commodities, financial instruments and currencies, etc.;
-- respecting other monopolies so they'll respect yours; and
-- perfecting your monopoly with new positions, raising prices to exploit them.
These practices made the land of "free-market capitalism" the land of monopoly, Lynn calling it nothing mysterious, saying: Monopoly is just "a form of government that one group of human beings imposes on another group, (its purpose being to let) the first group....transfer wealth and power to (itself. They) organize and disorganize, to grab and smash, to rule and ruin, in ways that serve their interests only. At bottom, monopoly is merely a political tool," not because of a better product or service, but through better capitalization and political connections.
The rich "reappropriated the institution of the corporation after (early 20th century antitrust laws restrained them), regarding (them) as the 'owners' of these institutions lies at the heart of our present crisis."
Our system's single biggest problem is having ceded "almost complete power over these institutions (to) a class of people whose interests (aren't) served....by building things but by breaking" them. Capitalism lets some people "use the power in concentrated capital to harness free citizens" and crush democratic freedoms.
As a result, monopolies run America. Antitrust enforcement is null and void, and according to Lynn: "It will take more than a lawsuit or two to overthrow America's corporatist oligarchy and restore a model of capitalism that protects our rights as property holders and citizens."
Getting money out of politics is key - the reality that big money dictates policy, pre-selects candidates, predetermines outcomes, gets the best democracy it can buy, assures a de facto one-party state, and a dominant media trumpeting the best of all possible worlds that's, in fact, corrupted, broken, despotic, and ruinous by benefiting the rich against the rest.
Short of sweeping fundamental change, nothing will deter corporate giants from securing total global control in a world intolerable for most, the direction we're now heading unless mass people power stops them. There's no other way! So what are we waiting for?
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/ http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/
http://www.rense.com/general90/newmon.htm
Barry C. Lynn's 'Cornered - The New Monopoly
Capitalism And The Economics Of Destruction'[SIZE=+1]
By Stephen Lendman 3-6-10[/SIZE]
Lynn is director of the Markets, Enterprise, and Resiliency Initiative, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and author of "Too Big to Fail" about the dangers of monopoly capitalism. He expands on the threat in his newest book titled, "Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction," explaining today's peril given the power of predatory giants.
They control governments, the courts, war and peace, dominant information sources, and essential services, including health care, air and water, what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, and school curricula to the highest levels. They own genetic code patents, basic human life elements to be commodified the same as toothpaste, tomatoes or toilet paper.
Omnipotent, they plunder recklessly, ruthlessly at our expense. They're private tryannies, endangering humanity, basic freedoms, environmental sustainability, and planetary survival. Without exaggeration, they're unaccountable, unchecked "weapons of mass destruction."
In "Cornered," Lynn explains the danger and urgency to address it. Our lives and futures depend on it.
It might have been different had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison prevailed over John Adams and Alexander Hamilton in crafting America's Bill of Rights. They wanted 12, not 10, including "freedom from a permanent military (and) monopolies in commerce."
Imagine the possibilities had they prevailed, or if early leaders agreed with Jefferson in 1816, seven years after his presidency, saying in a letter to a friend: "I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Earlier, he opposed chartering the first Bank of the United States, a 19th century version of today's central bank, what Andrew Jackson called a "hydra-headed monster," and Lincoln described as predatory money powers "more despotic than a monarch, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy."
He feared they'd accumulate enough wealth and power to destroy the Republic, similar to former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis' view saying, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we can't have both."
Others call it fascism or a reasonable facsimile with elements including:
-- the despotic union of corporate and state power - aka corporatism;
-- rampant corruption;
-- the disdain for human rights, civil liberties, and ordinary workers;
-- the dominance of militarism, belligerency, and permanent wars;
-- fraudulent elections;
-- an obsession with national security;
-- the control of public information; and
-- the omnipotence of corporate giants, taking full advantage to pillage and profiteer.
Lynn's book tells why, beginning in his preface titled, "Of Rule and Ruin," saying he warned about monopolization dangers because: "our political economy is run by a compact elite that is able to fuse the power of our public government with the power of private corporate governments in ways that enable members of the elite (to freely decide) who wins, who loses, and who pays."
His book is "a chronicle of a death foretold, and the corpse on the street (is) the American Republic."
Consolidated corporate power and the political complicity behind it means monopolists run the country and the world, justifying it as free-market fundamentalism - a corrupted deception masking predatory dominance that destroys democratic freedoms.
Ronald Reagan accelerated it when government stopped enforcing antitrust laws, and encouraged consolidation, production outsourcing, destruction of America's manufacturing base, the offshoring of high-paying jobs, financialization's ascendency and power of Wall Street, and the ability of corporate predators to break the law and get away with it, today more than ever under Obama.
Lynn calls his book "a sort of tour of monopoly in all its many guises, in the United States today....how monopolists rip us off as consumers, raising the prices we must pay" for everything including essentials becoming more unaffordable.
He covers new monopoly forms and others thought long ago vanished. Understanding them is key to knowing the dangers, from phenomena including:-- problems launching and successfully running a small business;
-- good jobs disappearing, replaced by low-paying service ones with few benefits;
-- the destruction of organized labor, aided by corrupted union bosses;
-- skyrocketing medical costs;
-- blocking efficient, low cost technologies that hurt profits;
-- low quality food, drugs and other products;
-- the burgeoning national debt and current account deficit; and
-- corporatization's corrupting dominance heading American toward despotism with governments as willing partners.
The auto industry is instructive, Lynn saying it "resembles the Hydra, the many-headed monster from Greek mythology." Like their heads relying on one body, the automakers "increasingly rely on a single common body of companies that supply the same components to all of them." In today's hard times, they stand or fall together, governments facilitating consolidation and bailing out the majors, or in other words, socializing risks, privatizing profits, and doing it for other endangered sectors, Wall Street getting the most by far from a privatized central bank they own and US Treasury they control.
Lynn structures his book in three parts:
-- examples of monopolies and the fallout from unrestrained corporate dominance;
-- the effects on ordinary people; and
-- how it affects other systems - ones in place "to protect peaceful international relations, our knowledge of how to make the products and grow the foods we need, and our political institutions."
Combined, he reveals a neofeudalist system of vast size and power, dominating all major American and global industries, consolidating for greater strength, partnered with governments, operating ruthlessly, crushing competition, exploiting workers, and colluding for greater control, the public welfare be damned.
Without antitrust enforcement, monopoly options include:
-- home-based ones to build a power base to capture global markets;
-- pincer ones - "One of the oldest techniques for capturing and protecting monopoly positions" by controlling related activities, then using them to consolidate and crush competition;
-- trading ones that rely on offshore suppliers, investing instead in marketing and strategic alliances for greater market share;
-- middleman ones to build power positions between producers and end users;
-- privatized public monopolies - the simplest, fastest way to create private ones;
-- leapfrog ones by repackaging old businesses in new technologies to escape government oversight; -- futures ones so financiers can dominate trading markets for commodities, financial instruments and currencies, etc.;
-- respecting other monopolies so they'll respect yours; and
-- perfecting your monopoly with new positions, raising prices to exploit them.
These practices made the land of "free-market capitalism" the land of monopoly, Lynn calling it nothing mysterious, saying: Monopoly is just "a form of government that one group of human beings imposes on another group, (its purpose being to let) the first group....transfer wealth and power to (itself. They) organize and disorganize, to grab and smash, to rule and ruin, in ways that serve their interests only. At bottom, monopoly is merely a political tool," not because of a better product or service, but through better capitalization and political connections.
The rich "reappropriated the institution of the corporation after (early 20th century antitrust laws restrained them), regarding (them) as the 'owners' of these institutions lies at the heart of our present crisis."
Our system's single biggest problem is having ceded "almost complete power over these institutions (to) a class of people whose interests (aren't) served....by building things but by breaking" them. Capitalism lets some people "use the power in concentrated capital to harness free citizens" and crush democratic freedoms.
As a result, monopolies run America. Antitrust enforcement is null and void, and according to Lynn: "It will take more than a lawsuit or two to overthrow America's corporatist oligarchy and restore a model of capitalism that protects our rights as property holders and citizens."
Getting money out of politics is key - the reality that big money dictates policy, pre-selects candidates, predetermines outcomes, gets the best democracy it can buy, assures a de facto one-party state, and a dominant media trumpeting the best of all possible worlds that's, in fact, corrupted, broken, despotic, and ruinous by benefiting the rich against the rest.
Short of sweeping fundamental change, nothing will deter corporate giants from securing total global control in a world intolerable for most, the direction we're now heading unless mass people power stops them. There's no other way! So what are we waiting for?
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/ http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/
Last edited:
highland145
Lifer
- Oct 12, 2009
- 43,973
- 6,338
- 136
How many here, and Americans in general, have 401Ks, IRAs,Roths? The CEOs/corporations don't print $$ like the treasury. These guys are spending your $$, your retirement. Stop funding them.
I don't think it's very practical to 'get out of the market' unless you think it'snot going to go up.
More practical are regulation of the compensation process and taxing the ultra high incomes.
werepossum
Elite Member
- Jul 10, 2006
- 29,873
- 463
- 126
Or if something really is "too big to fail" and must be propped up, first do so in a structured bankruptcy so that EVERYTHING is up for negotiation, including contracts for bonuses and stock options, and second, immediately break it into little pieces that aren't "too big to fail" to prevent future bail-outs. Right now we're developing a situation where taking big risks pays off for very big companies either way, as Unca Sam takes up the slack if that gambles fails.
I'm not much on wealth envy, but we really need to rein in stock options and other forms of capital gains where no money was risked. Right now management can issue itself profitable stock options even if stock prices went down and risk no personal money, they just have to execute some paperwork and pick up a check. I'd say unless one's money is actually at risk for a year or more, it should qualify as wages rather than capital gains. Exercising stock options and day trading adds no wealth to society and should not be rewarded with favorable tax breaks.
highland145
Lifer
- Oct 12, 2009
- 43,973
- 6,338
- 136
Some here would know but I remember hearing that the S&P500 lost 10 years of gains during the last bust. That's not a very good return on your $$. I agree on the "not going up" but we don't have a crystal ball.
What are the odds of getting regulation that actually works since both parties are in corporate pockets? http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/09/27/partisan-political-contributions-by-u-s-companies/
There are other ways to protect your $$ and save for retirement than the market. Individuals, en masse, investing in the market is a relatively new thing (1970's). Become self employed.
The problem with corporae corruption of government is no reason for citizens not to say what the right solutions are - and advocate them and fixing that corruption (elect progessives).
IndyColtsFan
Lifer
- Sep 22, 2007
- 33,655
- 688
- 126
Yeah but unfortunately, letting the companies who are "too big to fail" fail hurts the rank and file workers and the communities where these companies are located more than the buffoons at the top. The CEO and his pals have their golden parachutes and will live to wreck more companies.
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Jaskalas
Lifer
- Jun 23, 2004
- 35,858
- 10,170
- 136
Yeah but unfortunately, letting the companies who are "too big to fail" fail hurts the rank and file workers and the communities where these companies are located. The CEO and his pals have their golden parachutes and will live to wreck more companies.
At some point you could have just handed every household in America $125,000 for the cost of these bailed out companies. Instead of bailing out the rich you could have bailed out the poor.
GuitarDaddy
Lifer
- Nov 9, 2004
- 11,465
- 1
- 0
"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."
And it has only gotten worse I saw a continuation of this article where they calculated this metric for 2008 and CEO pay was then $840 to $1. And I suspect with the hammering the average worker took in 2009 while CEO's continued to reward themselves that the number is likely $1000 to $1 by now
A equally frightening study would be to do the same ratio comparison for Senators/Congressmen to the average citizen 1970 to current. That would open some eyes
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."
And it has only gotten worse
I saw a continuation of this article where they calculated this metric for 2008 and CEO pay was then $840 to $1. And I suspect with the hammering the average worker took in 2009 while CEO's continued to reward themselves that the number is likely $1000 to $1 by nowA equally frightening study would be to do the same ratio comparison for Senators/Congressmen to the average citizen 1970 to current. That would open some eyes
Last edited:
IndyColtsFan
Lifer
- Sep 22, 2007
- 33,655
- 688
- 126
Yeah, I understand. Maybe we should have done that. It is a complex problem and I don't pretend to know what we should have done.
highland145
Lifer
- Oct 12, 2009
- 43,973
- 6,338
- 136
So I'll say it again, since we're most likely not going to get meaningful reform, why continue to put your retirement $$ in the hands of these guys? Craig says it may not be practical to get out and I would agree if we could get the reform. Investing in American companies would be a no brainer then, imo."In 1970, CEOs made $25 for every $1 the average worker made. Due to technological advancements, production and profit levels exploded from 1970 - 2000. With the lion's share of increased profits going to the CEO's, this pay ratio dramatically rose to $90 for CEOs to $1 for the average worker.
As ridiculous as that seems, an in-depth study in 2004 on the explosion of CEO pay revealed that, including stock options and other benefits, CEO pay is more accurately $500 to $1."
And it has only gotten worse
And again, how many here regularly contribute to their retirement vehicle? Afraid to take a risk and move the $$ out, afraid of what's happening with your $$. So we continue to plod along, do "the right thing", save and pay our taxes and hope it will all work out. That $1000 to $1 is tell me it won't. OMG
Generally when you buy shares of a stock, you are purchasing them from a previous owner, not the company directly. The company doesn't make any money from shares traded on the open market.
Based on statistics, starting a business seems riskier than the stock market. Don't something like 90% of businesses end up failing?
alkemyst
No Lifer
- Feb 13, 2001
- 83,769
- 19
- 81
Except that majority holders are usually the CEO and the like and they do directly benefit from traffic/trends.
highland145
Lifer
- Oct 12, 2009
- 43,973
- 6,338
- 136
I would agree + what alkemyst said a couple of posts down. In my limited economic understanding: I think they, stocks and the corps, are linked. If a company's shareholders cash out because of loss of faith in that company then the stock will drop. Someone will be left holding the bag but the corps value based on the stock drops which should put them in a bind when they want to raise capitol, get loans or pay some ceo mega $$$$.
So we put our $$ in our IRA, the broker buy stocks and our $$ go into the market. We have all seen/bitched about the bonuses paid and the losses taken by shareholders. We are supporting them (brokers) very nicely, it appears, with not much( or nothing) in return. If the $$ didn't go to the corp in the first place, they couldn't pay the $1000 to $1 mentioned earlier. Craig's reform would be nice but don't hold your breath.
So what other vehicle is available? What did people do before 401Ks and IRAs? Maybe nothing, worked til 65 and died. Personally, my retirement is in my business. If it fails, so do I. 23 years experience and 5 on my own so I'm optimistic so far.
BoberFett
Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 37,562
- 9
- 81
Every once in a blue moon I agree with Craig on something.
So the question then becomes, how do you stop people from further enriching the wealthy at their own expense? The same wealthy people who own the company producing the item in demand are the very same people financing it to the consumer. I'd be willing to bet that the transfer of wealth from the middle class is very closely related to the interest paid on private debt.
So how do propose to stop it? Americans love their stuff.
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