Yes you are. Americans forget how rich the country is. You must think you are "poor" if you have to watch a 29" standard def TV instead of a 50" HD plasma.
Posted on 01/24/2007 1:59:36 PM PST by Graybeard58
Bloated CEO salaries – subsidized by taxpayers – undermine American values. Congress needs to reform the tax code.
The new Democratic-led Congress has already made great strides on its ambitious legislative agenda. From hiking the minimum wage to cutting interest rates on student loans, Democrats have won impressive bipartisan support for their legislative goals.
Not included on the agenda, however, is any proposal designed to address what may be the most fundamental problem facing America right now: an alarmingly high degree of inequality.
Currently the top 10 percent of income earners in the US own 70 percent of the wealth, and the wealthiest 5 percent own more than the bottom 95 percent, according to a Federal Reserve Study. The ratio of average CEO pay to worker pay in the US shot up from a mere 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004. The average CEO now earns $11.8 million per year, versus the paltry $27,460 for the average worker. As America tries to grapple with soaring healthcare costs and lack of universal coverage, UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire received an obscene $124.8 million in compensation in 2005. He's just one of many grossly overcompensated kingpins of the US economy.
Adding insult to injury, taxpayers actually subsidize these bloated CEO salaries. The federal government gives tax breaks to corporations for those salaries, to the tune of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.
We used to call this by another name: the Gilded Age.
Income disparity hurts democracy
The level of inequality and unfairness has risen to such eye-popping levels that it is attracting attention from unlikely sources. Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Board chair, has called rising inequality "a concern in the American economy." Mr. Bernanke's esteemed predecessor, Alan Greenspan, has said that disparate income distribution is "not helpful for
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The Top 50% pay 96.54% of All Income Taxes
The Top 1% Pay More Than a Third: 34.27%
• Jan. 8, 2007: The NY Times Admits It's the Truth
How about education institutes actually TEACHING people marketable skills so that they can go sell their skills and knowledge on the open economy?
How about people stop whining about what someone else has and actually WORKING to try to earn at least as much!!
How about kids face up to reality that they ALL won't be rock stars or professional athletes??
These are just for starters, add your own!!
Where is the inefficiency in CEO pay? Maybe they deserve it ... Or should Steve Joobs take apay cut?
Obviouosly, some CEOs who actually harm a company would be overpaid at $1 per year. On the other hand a CEO who can manage in such a way that a company's short term and longterm profit is sufficiently higher to justify his pay could be worth any amount, unless someone else could do just as well and be willing to work for less.
"You are subsidizing that $X million. Stop corporate welfare and this problem will go away."
WRONG! Taxpayers are not subsidizing anyone's compensation. That is misinformation in this article by an author who does not have a clue about basic tax law. Corporations are taxed on the profits that they get to keep. If a corporation passes part of the profit to employees as compensation, the corporation should rightly get a deduction for the compensation it paid to the employee because it did not get to KEEP that money. However, the employee pays the tax on the compensation so there is no tax avoidance or subsidy of any kind involved. Just more lies and nonsense from dumb Leftists.
Yes you are. Americans forget how rich the country is. You must think you are "poor" if you have to watch a 29" standard def TV instead of a 50" HD plasma.
LOL! If you really believe what you just wrote, then you are a very uninformed American.
The purpose of every corporation that I ever owned was to generate personal wealth for myself and my family.
And that is the sine quo non of free market capitalism.
It amazes me how misinformed and ignorant people are about our free market economy and basic economics. I read some really silly things on this board. It is sad really.
Those are the same people who will read an article like the one by this author and not see that he is clueless and completely wrong about everything he wrote.
Work harder.
This thread needs a Barf Alert in the title line.
"This thread needs a Barf Alert in the title line."
Big time!
But here is an interesting quote from one of my favorite Americans who had a word to say on the subject:
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
- Theodore Roosevelt
A. Pole is correct. That is the history of U.S. corporations and the reason they are chartered by government. What they are in fact is another matter.
bump for later
Marxachusetts rag. 'Nuff said.
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