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CEO Pay and the American Dream

  • Posted on February 23, 2010 at 7:21 pm

Gary Markstein from Cagle Blogs

http://cagle.msnbc.com/news/CEOSalaryCaps/1.asp

I came across an interesting website yesterday.  I was searching for information on the cost of congress.  I read some things but happened upon this site.  http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_nat.htm#b00-0000 What is interesting to me about this site is in the area of healthcare support workers.  Since there are so many people in the baby boom generation getting ready to retire I kind of think there will be plenty of jobs in the future in the area of health care workers.  You know the low paying type jobs where people are cleaning bed pans and taking care of the daily lives of our aging population.  Our young people looking for jobs have so much to look forward to if they are in food service or healthcare support.  Maybe one needs to be an air traffic controller instead.  Even though Reagan busted that union in the eighties it sure looks like that’s a job some might want with the high pay.  An ambulance driver makes less than a bus driver.  Wow, when your life is on the line, who are you going to call?  Sadly missing from this list are the CEO’s of the corporations which earn multitudes more than anything on this list.  They get paid the big bucks making sure we get paid the peanuts.

The AFL-CIO has data on their website about CEO pay.   http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

Wouldn’t you like compensation like this?  http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/ceou/top100.cfm I really don’t feel I need that much money and wonder why these guys need that much?  Is there ever enough?  The CEO for Visa makes almost $18 million dollars.  Little people with credit card debt should be mad as hell while they scrape their money together to pay their bills.  Omnicare, they provide pharmaceuticals for seniors, at least that’s what the web said.  I see lots of insurance and health care companies making the big bucks for the CEO’s.  The talking heads and Republicans are so worried about socialism.  Socially, I find these CEO pays unacceptable!  If you really search through the data on the AFL-CIO site it is quite interesting.  They list everyone from A-Z.  Do you know where your money is going?  My guess would be probably to some of these guys.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/IH31Dj02.html

Here is a snippet from this article:

American opinion on CEO pay
In the United States, only 32% of the public currently supports an outright pay cap on executive earnings. But average Americans appear to be every bit as outraged over CEO pay excess as average Europeans. Indeed, 77% of Americans say corporate executives “earn too much”. Only 11% admire “those who run” America’s “largest companies” either “a great deal” or “quite a bit”.

CEO pay isn’t limited to being a problem just here in the United States of America.  It is obviously a problem world wide as the rich appear to be getting richer and the poor poorer.  The bottom forty percent of the people in our country own less than one percent of its wealth.  It may be time for a revolution.  http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

If we can’t get Congress and the President to hear us, we may have to protest for the greater good of all the people.  I hear Republicans screaming about “Socialism” but if Capitalism is producing such a high discrepancy in the wealth distribution maybe we should consider more social type programs to even things out a bit.  It just isn’t right that it is getting harder and harder to earn a living wage in the U.S.A.  We all have heard since we were children about the “American Dream”.  You know the good job, white picket fence, nice house, nice car, healthy kids and the kids able to afford to go on to college.   And health care?  We never even had to hardly think about that.  My mom had fourteen children.  She used to spend about two weeks in the hospital.  Today all of that would be impossible!  All of the “American Dream” is in jeopardy at the current time for most of the American people.  There is a growing divide between those that “Have” and those that “Have not”.  I see it in my art classes.  Some students do a lot of traveling, have every toy you can imagine and some are just scraping by and hoping for some heating assistance for the winter months.  We need to shake up things in Washington D.C. before our communities all look like the war torn looking cities like Chicago and Detroit.  We must hold the Congress accountable for how they’re spending our money and who they are giving it to.  You know if they would have given that bail out money back to the people, I think the economy might have moved a bit.  They wanted to get money out in circulation.  The American people could have circulated that money a lot better than a band of bankers.  I’m sure they would have paid bills, bought vehicles, homes and everything else which would have stimulated this economy.  Congress in their infinite wisdom thinks we are too stupid to know what to do with our money.  Instead they kick it back to their friends and endorsers.  As a final note it will be interesting to see what Evan Bayh will do with his almost $14 million in campaign funds that he has left over.