The definition of UNPRECEDENTED : never known to have happened before.
I’m 70 and my wife is 66. Before Trump entered the political scene my wife and I had never heard the word unprecedented before! Now we are both totally sick of hearing it.
It sure seems like everything Trump does or says is unprecedented. What a misfit!!! He is an American anomaly.
WARNING- he is a carnival barker for a party who have sold their souls to the American Oligarchs who want to control everything and everyone
Sadly, since he was born in your country, you cannot deport him. You can (and should) put him in jail, depending on the crimes with which he can be found guilty. I hope treason is among them.
SHOULD be, yes. Too bad Bunkerboy and his ilk made him essentially immune to prosecution! I'm niave though, so I still believe we're going to see him shriek, "I DON'T WANNA' GO!!! I DON'T WANNA' GO! EHHHHHHHH!!!"
Betty Moyers ; It would be justice if he finally sees and experiences being given a good time out, in the form of having consequences that do not include being bailed out by bad billionaires. Our Democracy needs to see the Commander in Chief held accountable! It is an important precedent to set, right along with ethics rules for the Supreme court! It's time that our Democracy grows up!
I’m still praying he chokes on a Big Mac. Happiest day of my life will be when I wake up and that SOB is dead. The only way we won’t have to hear about him 24/7. I’m having a party! 🎉🎈
Blame Trump on Reagan and the Southern vote. After WWII, American corporations became world-famous, each steered by a CEOs who might have a house in the country by a lake where he could zip around in a boat with an Evinrude on the back. No private spaceships, no oceangoing yachts. Life was simple and rich.
1981. Enter the Mule. Ronald Reagan, imbued with Ayn Rand, early Alzheimer’s, a goofy grin, and Milton Friedman, a creepy sidekick who rejected Adam Smith in favor of trickledown. Top income tax was cut from 80% to 20%, unions busted, and government vilified with racist slurs about its malignant effects on “negroes.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rls8H6MktrA. The table was now set for private equity firms like Bain and McKinsey, led by snooty Ivy Leaguers, to eliminate jobs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOUojVd6xQ (8:58), in order to increase share prices. Real wages withered, as the income of the top 0.1% - including CEOs who relied on stocks - skyrocketed. Middle class families came to rely on two breadwinners, as traditional CEOs were replaced by corporate raiders like Romney, Icahn and Welch, who destroyed iconic companies by firing workers. Americans grew angrier, but were uncertain of where to direct their rage, finally settling on an orange buffoon who exploited them further. Deep distrust of government had by now so obscured the real enemy, that it begat vaccine skepticism, Fauci hatred, even Q’Anon.
Oliver Anthony is a white southerner with a hit song about "Rich men north of Richmond” paying him “bullshit wages” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5x35Ee1ftE. What fucking irony. People like Anthony elected Reagan in revenge for Civil Rights, then W, then Trump, while Clinton and Obama simply obeyed rich men north of Richmond, men who would never have held power without the Anthonys of the world. Indeed, southerners have exacted such a price for Civil Rights that decent people can be forgiven for not wanting to cover their fucking food stamps.
Unions may rescue us from fascism, but we also may need secession. Eh, Marjorie?
Coming from Marj's neck of the woods, I can tell you that most people there have had hard lives and not enough education. Sports? Plenty. Religion? Even more. For years, the economy was mostly textile mills. My parents told me that a man was shot in a labor demonstration during the Great Depression, and unions could never get a toehold after that. Eventually, the mills hired black people as well as well as whites, and then the Democrats made it easy to move the mills away. Gone! A few went back to farming the depleted soil, but many people drive a long way to any job they can find. Education funding shrank. A lot of people speak Fox now.
"Democrats made it easy to move the mills away." I assume you mean Clinton. But he just did what he was told by the "Rich men north of Richmond." Clinton will go down in history as a really bad president. NAFTA was a very bad trad deal. But remember, Clinton was made possible by Reagan, and Reagan was only possible because southern whites began voting against their economic interests in the 1960s.
Regarding the man shot in a demonstration during the Great Depression, that was the end of the gilded age. It was a Democrat, FDR, who began the long road to a liberal democracy where people would be held accountable for such atrocities.
Agree with you about Clinton, though. He could have vetoed the repeal of Glass Steagall - one of FDR's greatest accomplishments - but chose not to because he was already beholden to the Rich men North of Richmond. The Lehman crash came just 8 years later...
Agree with what Michael Hutchinson stated. What I’ve always found ironic is how the GOP vilified Clinton, when early in the 1992 election cycle with a dozen Democrats showing interest in the presidency, Clinton was noted as one of the most conservative and the most business friendly. What he did with NAFTA and destroying Glass-Steagall is unforgivable. Bring back Glass!
He couldn't veto Glass-he instigated it! His buddy Sandy Weill at CitiCorp had bought Travelers Ins in violation of Glass but had gotten the blessing of the Federal Reserve...how the Fed got the power to overrule federal law I've no idea. Weill got Clinton to gut Glass in order to solidify his purchase, setting the stage for a slew of mergers/buyouts between investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies, resulting in the CMO's that brought us 2008. Clinton should be in jail with Bush & Trump.
Gotta say I loved him. I thought he was a breath of fresh air after Reagan, but that was overlooking a lot. And, as Professor Reich who went to school with both Bill and Hillary, says she was more conservative. ( I wish we could come up with a replacement word for conservative; it really doesn't cover the threat.)
Who's this, "we," Daniel? I always thought the Slick Willy epithet suited him perfectly, because he was a sharp dealer who was not to be trusted. Especially after NAFTA.
You have to admit: the economy was BOOMING under him! We had an historically good economy, but as you say, he was FAR from perfect. (And in my defense, I was born in '87.)
Sounds similar to a place where I lived in the South when I was 8 to 11 years old (family moved a lot due to civil engineer father sent to oversee projects only until complete). There were several cotton mills in town, and most people worked for the mills and most people lived in houses owned by the mills and rented to them. (Such a deal...)
One day I walked with a friend to take lunch to her father. He worked at a nearby mill. We did not go through a door, nor did we enter. He was working double shifts temporarily. There were no unions, and work breaks were few and far between. One of his coworkers was watching for us, and he signaled to her father when the coast was clear. He father climbed out the large open window, slid along the old brick wall to a place where he would not be seen, and gulped down food and soda like a man starving. It was summer in North Carolina and hot. Work areas were kept ventilated with large open windows, and had no air conditioning. (Most places did not including our houses.) I wanted to cry seeing the condition of her father, soaked with sweat, almost ready to collapse, and barely able to speak.
This place became unionized a few years after we moved away. The movie "Norma Rae" is based on events there. The movie replicated the deafening clatter of machinery, but they did not replicate all the grimy cotton lint floating in the air and settling on everything inside and outside (sweaty skin, vegetation, neighborhood houses, etc.)
It should have been a great victory for mill workers to unionize, but the mills, or at least large cotton milling components, moved away. I visited this place on a recent road trip. The town is not large, and I was taking photos of old mills, careful to park outside property boundaries where signs warned of severe penalties for trespassing. I started noticing a police car at various side streets ahead, or crossing in front of us. When I stopped for gas at the bottom of a hill, a police car pulled into an empty parking lot halfway up the hill facing us. When I drove away I asked my traveling companion (Chicago-born-and-raised) if he had noticed the police car. "Hun?" He thought I was being paranoid. Perhaps. Anyway I took us to other historic sites far from the mills and no longer noticed police.
That's quite a memory to have had before you were eleven, and I'm happy those workers finally unionized. Even though our town was small, there was a separate elementary school for kids in the "mill village." When their mothers came to the business district to shop, they were frequently called "lint heads" because the lint would cling to their hair. But one of the mills did sponsor a nurse, who ran a clinic and was our Girl Scout leader. And about five miles up the road was another mill town with a company store. I was told they had only started taking money in the fifties rather than credit against wages for what they sold. They ran a whole separate school system for their population there was heavy football rivalry. I'm not sure what life is like there any more. The main street of our town is mostly empty of stores now, with Walmart just north of it and CVS to the south. We tried to find out who lives in our old house, and the next door neighbors didn't know. But before manufacturing was shipped off shore, I surely wish they had consulted the people who worked there.
Wow, it's sad that people working at the mill in your town were treated that way.
I do keep vivid memories of these places. Location is a good memory aid, so recalling place and memory together helps me keep them straight. (It was a lifestyle I would not recommend for children, though it is interesting now!)
There were too many mills in my town to limit workers to one area or school. There were four or five cotton mills throughout the town, and there also paper mills by a river. The paper millls were huge. One very large modern looking paper mill remains.. If they could, people would avoid living downwind from paper mills, because it was known that people in the area had unusually high health issues. Paint would peel prematurely from siding on houses in this area as well. Smoke from the old paper mills emitted a horrible stench that probably the presence of various sulphur compounds. On my recent visit, the area by the new large paper mill looked like a park, and there was no stench! Some changes are very positive.
The family with the father who worked in the cotton mill was remarkable. Both parents worked separate shiftl so my friend and her brother always had parents at home. Her father and uncles had built their tidy, sturdy house themselves, so they avoided renting from mill owners. They had indoor plumbing while the relatives still used outhouses. (Still common in South then.) They cared for an invalid grandmother at home. They planted a huge garden on the empty lot next to them and canned everything that could be canned. Her father always enjoyed growing plants and had built his own greenhouse in the backyard. When I-95 was extended by the town, he managed to get landscaping contracts with most of the hotels. He was now his own boss and they could quit the mill! (I learned the last information later from my father who visited one time.)
Hope it hasn't been too long winded. The family whom I knew for only three years has inspired me for years, though I had to be older to appreciate it. Cheers.
Thank you for sharing this. I had several friends whose parents were upper management in these mills, so my perspective was perhaps not as compassionate as it might have been, but one of my mother's best friends taught in the school in the mill village, and she was full of stories that made me realize how fortunate I was.
You know, I agree with most of what you have written, except I don'[t think Clinton and Obama "simply obeyed rich men north of Richmond". Other than that, your account of Regan et al is spot on, IMHO.
KMcGady - Obama didn't allow single payer at the healthcare debate table. That alone speaks to whom he obeyed. The "solution" they came up with was a huge gift to the medical industrial complex. It essentially cemented their power, and the resulting travesty of medical "care" is the result. So yes, he obeyed those rich white men.
I dont know all that much about the affordable care act. I do know of the idea that corporations can come up with better solutions than those of the people. It doesnt work. The way a corporation works is it will figure out how to benefit from whatever system is put in place in order to always maintain dominance and power over that industry. Thus never breaking the vicious cycle of corporate greed and abuse causing the problems that make symptoms they are trying to fix.
Read Anand Ghiradas Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the world. Clinton believes in helping people, its how they are helped is the problem in his thinking. He believes private corporations can make up in philanthropy for what the government cant afford to do. Of course if it wasnt for all the corporate and billionaire tax breaks the government could help people oddles more than private citizens or corporations ever would care too. Obama wise, ugg, read Robert Reichs The System. Who Rigged it and how we fixed it. During the mortgage lending crisis of 2008 Obama bailed out a buttload of millionaire bankers and big banks that were (to important to fail). Zero of the people who had bad mortgages were given anything and many were heavily debt ridden and many lost their homes leading to a great reduction of wealth for the middle class. Affordable health care I applaud (I think it should go farthe). Bailing out banks that had shoddy loans no so much.
The ACA was a bone thrown to the people so Obama could renege on his promise of universal healthcare while handing billions to the insurance companies. The ACA has helped millions of people, no question, but overall, the coverage is sketchy and the premiums go up every year. If you're not completely destitute, ACA coverage can cost more than employer-paid coverage.
Succession would only make things worse. The South has to learn about degrees of responsibility. Kindergarten teaches gradients. Then negotiation becomes possible, and you get what you want without violence.
The amount of money being paid to the controlling officers of various concerns is a sticking point between labor and management. There is absolutely no justification for the vast sum of money being paid to these people. This gross inequity acts like a wedge that further separates mind from muscle. There was a situation in the past that spoke to this problem, the people in power suggested the less fortunate should "eat cake." With the transparency given to all positions within a company, pay levels are no longer a closely guarded secret. I understand the importance held by a CEO in any company but the unacceptable inequalities found in their pay levels only breeds resentment. I feel bonuses instead of inflated pay scales would serve to balance the differences found in any company. People have a basic need to feel wanted, needed, and respected. Supplementing their income partially through a bonus system would take a certain amount of pressure off of management by asking labor to accept quarterly checks based upon their overall efforts geared toward production. The bottom lines for these companies would spell the size of the checks given to its employees. Again, transparency would go a long way in letting labor see their true worth in any work situation. Share the wealth, a content labor force produces a better product hands down.
Our government should not enact a law governing executive pay. It would be too much interference with free enterprise. Instead, we should tax capital gains as ordinary income. We should examine how my proposal would work, including its affect on investment in new ventures.
I would say he is an "anomaly" per se, Mr. Olsen. He is simply what the Trumplican party HAS BEEN since the first dementia-addled president dribbled all over us in the 1960s: corrupt, shameless, supremely bigoted, hateful, stupid and yes, EVIL.
Bush and much moreso his son, Dubbya', just hid their bigotry and coruption a little better! (Dubbya' didn't hide his stupidity too well though.)
I wish trump were an anomaly but this country has always been full of hucksters and carnival barkers. After all, Europe sent only their finest minds and citizens to these shores, right? Likewise, PT Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. Rachel Maddow’s current work as well as plenty of historians have laid out for us how tfg is the farthest thing from the exception but rather the rule. The ‘unpresidented’ part about him is, he ran for President-and won! The suckers and Russia wedged him into the Oval Office for four, excruciating years.
Trump isn't an anomaly he's merely another power hungry person prepared to do evil things to gain dominance. He cares only for his own large arse. He's Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat from the childrens book circa 1950. That s__t got defeated when the other animals moved into an unsquashable abandoned truck tire. Our truck tire is the coming election. Now lets quit wringing our hands, organize, and vote Dump and his co-conspirators onto the next bus to Siberia.
Why does everyone who writes the word SHOULD also have a sub stack...I don't even know that that is...BUT WHENEVER I HEAR "SHOULD" I RUN THE OTHER WAY...for obvious reasons...
Instead of should, I recommend DO...do you want something? get up and make it... or in our society, buy it....
Should would could must are words teachers are encouraged not to use with children. But I read them as suggestions, and in a conversation with adults, I accept them as that
I’m sick of hearing it too. The only unprecedented event to take place was probably the bite of the apple thing in the Garden of Eden. It was all downhill after that.
I can’t use the form. When I enter my information, and click the “Start Writing” button, I get the message that an error has occurred...please try again. I don’t think the script works for MACs.
You can go directly to the U.S. House or Senate website and use the form your own representative provides. Letters in your own words are taken more seriously than submitting a letter prewritten by someone else.
Thank you for writing, Carolyn. Earlier this morning, I did precisely as you suggested, and, frankly, was able to write a more persuasive letter because I could work from text Reich had provided.
I don't need to receive any more daily emails from all those organizations sponsoring the message, so I just used my reps' government websites. If you are used to writing/calling your reps, it's not hard at all.
apparently this error is non platform or browser specific because i tried it w/ 4 different browsers on 2 different devices, my desktop pc and android phone... Action Network (the host) has to fix it.
Wealth has already been taxed when earned. Taxing it again would be unfair. Instead, a more reasonable tax would be to tax capital gains as ordinary income.
Also, studies have shown that chief executive decisions are only right about 50% of the time. So, no, they are NOT worth the premium they are being paid.
Yes, that's about as effective as "Vote the bums out!" when gerrymandering ensures that we can't vote the bums out. I can easily see corporate charters and rules written to achieve the same ends.
Hi Constance, do you believe Congress has the power and/or is willing to write a law that would govern CEO pay of private corporations like XOM and APPLE?
The courts would slap down every effort at such legislation, either by saying it violates the interstate commerce clause, or by stating they don't have jurisdiction because they are not American companies. They are global. And again, that's one more way to evade this law - relocate their CEOs on paper to one of their non-U.S. business addresses.
The black and red lines equals 300 milllion people. Lorded over what is about 22,000,000 millionaires and billionares. Which is only 6.5% of the population. 1 feudal lord billionaire and 30,000 millionaire pyscofants for every 420,000 (black/red and 3.5% green) people. Id like to see if the same percentages lineup in company CEO boards as well.
What a stunt! There is ZERO chance this passes as law. Virtue signaling does not drive results for the average American.
Forget ‘average’ American, it would be useful if the Federal Minimum Wage increased. Hello? Can we start there where there’s at least a chance at success?
CEO pay and stock buy backs are one of main reasons for lower worker pay. Shareholders pay the CEO more, he sends stock buy backs (legal embezzelment) their way. That comes from illuminating jobs and wage suppression. I have watched this horror show combination rip apart 2 companies. If we dont address wealth inequality of those at the top a Federal minimum wage increase will only mean that the depths of the bottom that companies can go to will be higher. The company will figure out a way to drop higher paid salaries to that new bottom which will reduce the median salary anyway. I agree minimum wage is important. All my wifes recent wage increases were from state minimum wage bumps. It helps and is needed and so is limits on CEO pay.
I think the answer is really going to come from the workers themselves in most cases their unions. Somebody needs to tell these guys either you're going to shape up, pay the people properly or we're going on strike.
The other thing we need to do is force corporations to not increase the price of their products or services because of this increase in an amount over the actual increase. Corporations are notarious for taking expenses and making them into profits. In other words if they have an increase in cost of 5%, they will take that 5% and add another 10% to it for their profit and say that it's because of the strike or the workers pay or the workers' compensation. In other words they're going to lie to increase their profits. That needs to stop.
Unions seem to be the answer I have seen as well. There is no amount of bellyaching or protest that has availed employees in my company any sort of raise commensurate with inflation. Even though the company has benefitted greatly from additonal fees and record profits. The company sent us a survey to find out what we wanted and it was weighted with questions for those not paying attention that would give the answer the company wanted. To be used in the future to prove that workers "wanted" these things. They then used the answers to enact more cuts in form of removing carry over PTO. Would you want 40 hours of PTO or $1000. Unless you are getting minimum wage at $15 an hour. This is an insult. And even then $1000 at taxed at bonus rate. So the only input they used from us was to use a rigged test to take more monry away from us and make it seem like they were helping us out. In addition after a massive backlash on this new policy we were offered one week of PTO we could BORROW against our own time and if we quit or were laid off before accumulating the time back we would have to reimburse the company. Lean six sigma. The only way to get any sort of deal is to play hardball and force them to the table. Yelling about it does nothing. The time for talking with management is over.
Tell this to the employees of Microsoft, Apple, Alpha, etc . Their CEO’s pay is in the stratosphere. I know some of the folks who are working there. They have excellent salaries and I have never heard them complain about the incomes of their CEO’s.
Hartmut I fully respect your candor, and conversation. I work for one of the monopolies in the etc, column. If you are one of the folks who has been laid off or one of the many even in the non etc. companies above who has gotten a 3% minor pay increases when the CEO has gotten an 18% or 200% pay increase there is something to gripe about. A company will pay better wages when its not a monopoly. It works hard to become a monopoly. Once it has joined with another company it lays off an equal amount of people that it hired with the new company. I have seen 2 mergers and this second one has been murderous. We hired folks right after the last merger. All those folks were not being paid enough to live on one income with the 2nd tier job that they were in (one was living outnof his car). Then all of these new hires were laid off and a bunch of veterans (with quite higher pay) too. This reduced the median wages of everyone in the company. Before the layoffs the company stock was sky rocketing. Every year it would be layoffs followed by CEO pay increase and stock buy backs. Then higher profits, more CEO pay recently increased 200% and even a higher number of stock buy backs. All told stock buy backs in the form of $60B as in Billion. So that is $60B the company is giving to shareholders when it already has $170B of outstanding debt it is doinf nothing about. Thats like have a big house loan and taking out $60 billion additional loan to fund a fun gettaway vacation. This doesnt mention the previous company I worked for Nortel that went under and my friend who also worked for them lost his entire life savings as his Nortel equivalent stocks debt was only satisfied after the shareholder got their money first.
Mergers are regulated. Employees who invest their retirement savings in the stock of the company where they work are in double jeopardy. They would be wise to diversify.
Absolutely it was insane. Back in those days the people who had Nortel stock refused to believe the company would go under. He had changed his entire contribution from 401k to the stock purchase option and then simply never changed it. Denial cant bring back all their lost money. Its sad that it happened and its sad that he is losing his house and his only retirement is SSI.
Surely you jest. Check out those companies. Use H1B visas to avoid using American workers. Use "stringers" as "outside contractors" to avoid paying "employees." In Apple's case most production is in China.
Microsoft listed job requirements, must work at Bremerton, Washington. One way in, one way out.
Oh, damn forgot about that. Yeah, good engineering jobs with 6 month contracts (lest they be deemed employees) leave these H1B Visa guys scrambling when their contractor is up to get whatever job they can (at whatever wage) or be kicked out of the country. Forgot about that. Before we started laying off folks I have seen at least 15 H1B folks in that cycle of boom or bust. It is definitely a way of keeping people "in their place" with few rights and little options. I believe our immigration department is part of the problem of enforcing of these laws that make people work for less money. Look at the H1Bs and look at undocumented. It helps business to have undocumented because they will work for less than minimum wage and have no SSI benefits in the end. So immigration lets them stay here to work but not legally. Then makes the immigrant pay a bunch of legal fees and filing fees to attempt to become legal. We might as well have legalized the INS as Coyotes. The wages lost to immigrants through double taxation and lack of benefits and instability is probably equivalent too the exhorbant interest rates Coyotes charge on their cross the border loans. Legal and illegal loan sharking. Between the Coyotes and the INS we have people in this country who are indentured servents (NOT KIDDDING) for 5 years or more.
@Bill Reitz. Actually, I heard those cases. I heard 22 kinds of visa cases. At one time I was on the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals.
One of our staff attorneys had an office covered with files from floor to ceiling just from Microsoft.
If I only knew this stuff when I practiced law. I try to tell young lawyers that if they want to make a living they should look into this stuff, but youth is wasted on the young.
Makes sense. Microsoft the company that got sued because it had so many contractors working as contractors year over year that the court had them converted to employees. Contract work is contract work I get that. When a person leaves due to contract over stay and is immediately replaced with a new contractee its depressing. You build up relationships with these folks. Sometimes they come back sometimes they get full time jobs elsewhere. Their job duty usually is important for many years, but the employer likes them light and cheap. I only wish the best for the ones that have their families in tow. What a ride that has go be.
You do know that Inequality Media (Reich’s start-up) has used contractors. Sometimes it is what is win-win. I mean a lot of people like being their own boss and making their own hours. I don’t agree with bashing contractors and people who work in the Gig Economy!
I think a big help on reducing CEO pay would be to require companies to have a non-employee independent chairman of the board. The board sets the CEOs pay, and when most CEOs are also the chairman of the board, you can see the conflict of the CEO basically setting his own pay!
Most stockholders don't care much about excessive CEO pay. They care about stock price and dividend rate. Practically every company has an advisory "Say on Pay" on the yearly proxy, where you can vote against the salary of the senior executives. Stockholders almost always vote to 'approve" their senior executive pay! Any changes will have to come from the government (the CEO Act mentioned by Mr. Reich).
There's hardly an American who doesn't own stock somehow, but most of us hold it in funds of one sort or another. I'm wondering if that's why much of the pressure is off.
Good point. Stock funds are frequently the largest shareholders, so have greatest influence. However, I am asked to vote for my individual stocks that I own, but I have never been asked how a stock fund that I own should vote. I think they should ask us!
When shareholders approve "say on pay", it's not the role of government to block their action. If one does not like executive pay, one can decline to buy stock in that company.
A minimum wage increase does not address the issue of CEO pay. Taxing capital gains as ordinary income would address CEO after tax pay. California taxes capital gains as ordinary income.
Mike, Bernie tried to increase the minimum wage, and was sidelined. So, probably no more chance of getting that done than putting an excise tax on obscene CEO pay. But that's no reason to stop trying to get it done.
If wages go up, though, companies will simply raise prices to [more than] cover the cost.
I don’t understand how it is a “start”. It’s useless signaling without any chance of result. It’s only pandering to a base which already knows CEO pay is high.
I guess there’s so much slack time, congressmen can spend a bunch of time writing a bill they know won’t pass. The only good I see is that it probably helps in fundraising - not governing!
The link to Patriotic Millionaires and writing to Congress will feel good, as will a manageable donation to the cause. However, they, the CEO, aren’t listening, and they will continue to keep up the distorted pay gap because they can, and it’s all currently legal, it seems. The nearly 63 thousand letters won’t see many eyes. The gridlock in getting anything through Congress to counter CEO pay will be a nightmare even if the Democrats held both houses, the executive, and at least two more SCJs retire and are replaced by more liberal ones. It’s terrible, and for those who do not want to see DJT back in the WH as well in 2024, this battle for a 50-1 CEO to median worker pay is worth taking on, albeit a vast fish to fry given the players involved. There is too little common good going around these days. Couple it all with AI reality fearmongering (real, imagined, and conspiratorially), and the pro-CEO pay crowd must be wringing their hands in sheer joy currently. Sad really. Shame on them!
"Rule 10b-18, the rule proposed in 1982, gives executives total power (and a blank check) to determine their own incentive-based compensation." In a Forbes article by Arne Alsin, 2/28/2017, Alsin explains that for most of the 20th Century, stock buybacks were illegal because they were considered a form of market manipulation. I'm pretty sure I also learned that from Robert Reich as well. Alsin goes on to say that a solution would be to give shareholders the right to vote on stock buybacks since they often don't benefit while executives do well.
With the proposed legislation, wouldn't executives decide if the corporation will take the tax hit for too high a ratio between CEO and worker pay? The shareholders could vote in a new board if they did that. Right? Somebody help me here. This is not my area of expertise.
A share buyback is when companies pay shareholders to buy back their own shares, cancel them and, ultimately, reduce share capital. While fewer shares remain in circulation, remaining shareholders get both a larger stake in the company and a higher return on future dividends. Minority shareholder lose their stock -- are bought out.
Shareholders have the right to bring shareholder derivative suits. Can't tell you how often minority shareholders are screwed up and down and sideways.
Depending on state law shareholders have a right to enforce the legal duties owed to them by corporate directors and officers through direct, or individual, lawsuits. Can address personal losses that result from a corporation’s breach of duty – especially so in small and closely held corporations where minority shareholders have been victimized by majority shareholder oppression.
A lot of the precedent is in Delaware. E.G. A Hertz Global Holdings Inc. investor sued affiliates of its private equity backers, Certares Management LLC and Knighthead Capital Management LLC, over their role in a $2.8 billion stock buyback program..
Will this significantly alter CEO pay and the CEO/worker pay ratios buy halting some buybacks? I can't get the information because I am not affiliated with a company.
I dunno' . . . I bet Bunkerboy would be pretty good, as he would likely taste like the berders he loves so much. Nice and tender too! Then again, he would be EXTREMELY greasy and fatty.
It would seem that one cause of the CEO meteoric rise in compensation is a result the focus on a company's stock price performance and the reward in shares of stock to these CEOs. Perhaps they should focus on that as well.
HEADS-UP: I just used the link in today's email newsletter to go to actionnetwork.org. I filled out the form, but when I clicked the "Start Writing" button, I got an error. Three times in a row. I checked to make sure that my fields were filled in properly, etc.
They are published,every year without fail. The 10K report and the proxy report.They give you all the info on a company that you need.
The human race works on the basis of the facts don't fit in with what I want to see so the facts are wrong.
CEO of Wal mart is paid $1.5 million per year.The rest is performance bonus paid in shares,an option if you like.Don't meet the performance hurdles and the options expire worthless.
As an example if they meet revenue/ profit targets they get the chance to buy ,in the future,say $25 million worth of shares at $20 million .They still have to pay $20 million to get the shares.Then it will be reported ( shock,horror) wages of $25 million .Depending on the IRS they will need to sell some of the shares to pay CGT,and of course to come up with $20 million.
You can buy as many shares as you like,or choose to come up with any excuse at all to refuse to spend money to buy them .
They'll give you the 5 year return,Wal mart at a base of $100 five years ago with dividends reinvested was worth ~ $148 at balance date. Nobody has ever had $100 to spare. An easy problem to solve,borrow $100 and meet the interest payments.Say the interest is 6% then you need $6 a year. Amazingly the picture instantly changes,across an entire lifetime nobody has ever had a spare $6 at anytime in their entire lives.
“This is part of the story of how American capitalism has become rigged in favor of those at the top. It leads us directly to oligarchy — rule by the richest few, putting democracy at risk.”
Unfortunately, we’ve always been an oligarchy since our founding. Originally, only white male Christian’s, who were land or business owners could participate in democracy, as well as participate in creating our laws and institutions that continue to favor the rich.
As the industrial revolution emerged, the oligarchs became Robber Barrons or Industrialists. They wielded even more power than the oligarchs do today. They even tried to stage a coup against FDR in 1933 and install Major General Smedley as a puppet president; although Smedley would refuse to go along with the scheme, known as the Business Plot. He would later be ridiculed by the press after testifying before Congress, including the NYT’s, because the rich always stick together. And like the early 1900’s, the press is continually being controlled by major corporations or billionaires. So much for the fourth estate!
That said, nothing has changed since the industrial revolution, except the players and a few men and women being allowed to join the club, and reap the benefits!of classism.
We always talk about the patriarchy and the impact it has on the rest of us. Women and people of color continue to fret that the system is rigged against them. And while it’s true, the system wasn’t built to favor all white male Christian’s, which is why there has always been a disconnect between most white men and the most marginalized in our society.
Italians and Irish and even rich Jews were never part of the club until the post-WW2 era. And in some cases, they’re still just tokens. And the reason most men refuse to believe their lives are any better than women and minorities is because most white people struggle as well; even given the advantages they attain above the rest of society.
The system is definitely built to serve some over others, but it’s a two tiered system. It built to serve some white Christian’s at the top, and while capitalism still allows newcomers to join; it’s just a select few. Until recently, women and minorities were persona non grata. The middle class has over time lessened the disparities between the sexes and classes, but hardly enough to satisfy most of us who still feel disillusioned and marginalized in society.
That said, in today’s world the system fails most of us, and for those at the top, or the upper middle class, you still have privileges they allude the rest of society. Especially opportunities to attend college and make contacts to help with employment opportunities.
As for solutions to this problem. Society had been addressing these issues since the civil rights era; however, every time this country takes one step forward, there is a force that tries to squash change and force us to take two steps back. It’s Newton’s third law of Motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction!
Bottom line: with todays political dysfunction and misinformation and lies circulating faster than the speed of light, it’s hard to know “up from down,” so I wouldn’t bet any time soon for any positive change. This will be especially true if Trump is re-elected, in which case, there will be change coming--good and hard; just not the kind of change this country wants or needs.
It hasnt been the same. From baby boomer 1945 to about 1977 there was an increase in poor, middle and upper middle, and rich wages that was inline with incresse in productuon. A company produced more and all the levels of income rose equally. This was largely due to the power of unions to fight for pay increases and as a voting block. Come GE CEO Jack Welch and he showe other CEOs how to make ever more money by laying off tons of people and closing down buildings. Many companies copied the six sigma layoff schedule (mine included) and the CEO and share holders are dancing on piles of money. After that poor, middle and upper middle wages stagnated and inflation wise have gone down. The highest income earners in the US saw there income/wealth skyrocket. For that span of 32 years it wasn't always the same. It has to be explained that we have had a better way of doing things before and can again. Things dont have to forever be bad just because have been recently. As voters in a democracy we still chose our politicians. The fact that Trump his backers and many of these pseudo fascist Billionaries fight so hard against the electorate is because the system to whatever extent still has the capability of removing their power and they know it.
I didn’t say the country remained static, I said the power of the oligarchs or billionaire class hasn’t diminished; they now reap even more power; especially since the SC gutted voting rights and allowed dark and unlimited money into politics.
Whether billionaires feel they can be usurped is irrelevant since these people tend to be extremely paranoid to begin with. Their feelings aren’t reality. And it’s not the masses they fear, it’s their rivals, competition and political enemies that keep them up at night.
Otherwise, I agree with your analysis, you just interpreted my analysis differently than its intended meaning.
Just a quick comment on current events.
The definition of UNPRECEDENTED : never known to have happened before.
I’m 70 and my wife is 66. Before Trump entered the political scene my wife and I had never heard the word unprecedented before! Now we are both totally sick of hearing it.
It sure seems like everything Trump does or says is unprecedented. What a misfit!!! He is an American anomaly.
WARNING- he is a carnival barker for a party who have sold their souls to the American Oligarchs who want to control everything and everyone
He’s also getting away with everything! Why? Put his disgusting ass in prison! Enough!
Strip his American citizenship and kick him out of the country.
Like HE said: if you doesn't like OUR justice system, he can LEAVE!
Sadly, since he was born in your country, you cannot deport him. You can (and should) put him in jail, depending on the crimes with which he can be found guilty. I hope treason is among them.
Trump destroyed America. Don't let it happen again!
Biden 2024 all day long.
This anti-Trump 2024 election T is funny and clever: t.co/qamICK599Z
The government should let the people vote on it!
Keith Olson ; It should be self enforcing!
SHOULD be, yes. Too bad Bunkerboy and his ilk made him essentially immune to prosecution! I'm niave though, so I still believe we're going to see him shriek, "I DON'T WANNA' GO!!! I DON'T WANNA' GO! EHHHHHHHH!!!"
Hoping he’s dead by then. 🙏
Betty Moyers ; It would be justice if he finally sees and experiences being given a good time out, in the form of having consequences that do not include being bailed out by bad billionaires. Our Democracy needs to see the Commander in Chief held accountable! It is an important precedent to set, right along with ethics rules for the Supreme court! It's time that our Democracy grows up!
He is so gross and unhealthy and his skin is so sickly looking, I can’t believe he hasn’t dropped dead already.
Daniel H Laemmerhirt ; I think we will see justice!
The people should demand a vote on it! We are paying them to work for US!
Yup- afraid I'll die before seeing any accountability...
Betty,
"getting away with it'? is he?
then grab him by the cojones and make his feel the pain!!!!!!
I’m still praying he chokes on a Big Mac. Happiest day of my life will be when I wake up and that SOB is dead. The only way we won’t have to hear about him 24/7. I’m having a party! 🎉🎈
Saving some very nice champagne for the celebration. I look forward to it DAILY!
Blame Trump on Reagan and the Southern vote. After WWII, American corporations became world-famous, each steered by a CEOs who might have a house in the country by a lake where he could zip around in a boat with an Evinrude on the back. No private spaceships, no oceangoing yachts. Life was simple and rich.
1981. Enter the Mule. Ronald Reagan, imbued with Ayn Rand, early Alzheimer’s, a goofy grin, and Milton Friedman, a creepy sidekick who rejected Adam Smith in favor of trickledown. Top income tax was cut from 80% to 20%, unions busted, and government vilified with racist slurs about its malignant effects on “negroes.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rls8H6MktrA. The table was now set for private equity firms like Bain and McKinsey, led by snooty Ivy Leaguers, to eliminate jobs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiOUojVd6xQ (8:58), in order to increase share prices. Real wages withered, as the income of the top 0.1% - including CEOs who relied on stocks - skyrocketed. Middle class families came to rely on two breadwinners, as traditional CEOs were replaced by corporate raiders like Romney, Icahn and Welch, who destroyed iconic companies by firing workers. Americans grew angrier, but were uncertain of where to direct their rage, finally settling on an orange buffoon who exploited them further. Deep distrust of government had by now so obscured the real enemy, that it begat vaccine skepticism, Fauci hatred, even Q’Anon.
Oliver Anthony is a white southerner with a hit song about "Rich men north of Richmond” paying him “bullshit wages” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5x35Ee1ftE. What fucking irony. People like Anthony elected Reagan in revenge for Civil Rights, then W, then Trump, while Clinton and Obama simply obeyed rich men north of Richmond, men who would never have held power without the Anthonys of the world. Indeed, southerners have exacted such a price for Civil Rights that decent people can be forgiven for not wanting to cover their fucking food stamps.
Unions may rescue us from fascism, but we also may need secession. Eh, Marjorie?
Coming from Marj's neck of the woods, I can tell you that most people there have had hard lives and not enough education. Sports? Plenty. Religion? Even more. For years, the economy was mostly textile mills. My parents told me that a man was shot in a labor demonstration during the Great Depression, and unions could never get a toehold after that. Eventually, the mills hired black people as well as well as whites, and then the Democrats made it easy to move the mills away. Gone! A few went back to farming the depleted soil, but many people drive a long way to any job they can find. Education funding shrank. A lot of people speak Fox now.
"Democrats made it easy to move the mills away." I assume you mean Clinton. But he just did what he was told by the "Rich men north of Richmond." Clinton will go down in history as a really bad president. NAFTA was a very bad trad deal. But remember, Clinton was made possible by Reagan, and Reagan was only possible because southern whites began voting against their economic interests in the 1960s.
Regarding the man shot in a demonstration during the Great Depression, that was the end of the gilded age. It was a Democrat, FDR, who began the long road to a liberal democracy where people would be held accountable for such atrocities.
Agree with you about Clinton, though. He could have vetoed the repeal of Glass Steagall - one of FDR's greatest accomplishments - but chose not to because he was already beholden to the Rich men North of Richmond. The Lehman crash came just 8 years later...
Agree with what Michael Hutchinson stated. What I’ve always found ironic is how the GOP vilified Clinton, when early in the 1992 election cycle with a dozen Democrats showing interest in the presidency, Clinton was noted as one of the most conservative and the most business friendly. What he did with NAFTA and destroying Glass-Steagall is unforgivable. Bring back Glass!
He couldn't veto Glass-he instigated it! His buddy Sandy Weill at CitiCorp had bought Travelers Ins in violation of Glass but had gotten the blessing of the Federal Reserve...how the Fed got the power to overrule federal law I've no idea. Weill got Clinton to gut Glass in order to solidify his purchase, setting the stage for a slew of mergers/buyouts between investment banks, commercial banks and insurance companies, resulting in the CMO's that brought us 2008. Clinton should be in jail with Bush & Trump.
We can all see NOW that his booming economy was a farce! We loved him in the 90s though.
Gotta say I loved him. I thought he was a breath of fresh air after Reagan, but that was overlooking a lot. And, as Professor Reich who went to school with both Bill and Hillary, says she was more conservative. ( I wish we could come up with a replacement word for conservative; it really doesn't cover the threat.)
Who's this, "we," Daniel? I always thought the Slick Willy epithet suited him perfectly, because he was a sharp dealer who was not to be trusted. Especially after NAFTA.
You have to admit: the economy was BOOMING under him! We had an historically good economy, but as you say, he was FAR from perfect. (And in my defense, I was born in '87.)
YES, about Clinton, Michael!
Sounds similar to a place where I lived in the South when I was 8 to 11 years old (family moved a lot due to civil engineer father sent to oversee projects only until complete). There were several cotton mills in town, and most people worked for the mills and most people lived in houses owned by the mills and rented to them. (Such a deal...)
One day I walked with a friend to take lunch to her father. He worked at a nearby mill. We did not go through a door, nor did we enter. He was working double shifts temporarily. There were no unions, and work breaks were few and far between. One of his coworkers was watching for us, and he signaled to her father when the coast was clear. He father climbed out the large open window, slid along the old brick wall to a place where he would not be seen, and gulped down food and soda like a man starving. It was summer in North Carolina and hot. Work areas were kept ventilated with large open windows, and had no air conditioning. (Most places did not including our houses.) I wanted to cry seeing the condition of her father, soaked with sweat, almost ready to collapse, and barely able to speak.
This place became unionized a few years after we moved away. The movie "Norma Rae" is based on events there. The movie replicated the deafening clatter of machinery, but they did not replicate all the grimy cotton lint floating in the air and settling on everything inside and outside (sweaty skin, vegetation, neighborhood houses, etc.)
It should have been a great victory for mill workers to unionize, but the mills, or at least large cotton milling components, moved away. I visited this place on a recent road trip. The town is not large, and I was taking photos of old mills, careful to park outside property boundaries where signs warned of severe penalties for trespassing. I started noticing a police car at various side streets ahead, or crossing in front of us. When I stopped for gas at the bottom of a hill, a police car pulled into an empty parking lot halfway up the hill facing us. When I drove away I asked my traveling companion (Chicago-born-and-raised) if he had noticed the police car. "Hun?" He thought I was being paranoid. Perhaps. Anyway I took us to other historic sites far from the mills and no longer noticed police.
I hope your town finds some revitalization.
That's quite a memory to have had before you were eleven, and I'm happy those workers finally unionized. Even though our town was small, there was a separate elementary school for kids in the "mill village." When their mothers came to the business district to shop, they were frequently called "lint heads" because the lint would cling to their hair. But one of the mills did sponsor a nurse, who ran a clinic and was our Girl Scout leader. And about five miles up the road was another mill town with a company store. I was told they had only started taking money in the fifties rather than credit against wages for what they sold. They ran a whole separate school system for their population there was heavy football rivalry. I'm not sure what life is like there any more. The main street of our town is mostly empty of stores now, with Walmart just north of it and CVS to the south. We tried to find out who lives in our old house, and the next door neighbors didn't know. But before manufacturing was shipped off shore, I surely wish they had consulted the people who worked there.
Wow, it's sad that people working at the mill in your town were treated that way.
I do keep vivid memories of these places. Location is a good memory aid, so recalling place and memory together helps me keep them straight. (It was a lifestyle I would not recommend for children, though it is interesting now!)
There were too many mills in my town to limit workers to one area or school. There were four or five cotton mills throughout the town, and there also paper mills by a river. The paper millls were huge. One very large modern looking paper mill remains.. If they could, people would avoid living downwind from paper mills, because it was known that people in the area had unusually high health issues. Paint would peel prematurely from siding on houses in this area as well. Smoke from the old paper mills emitted a horrible stench that probably the presence of various sulphur compounds. On my recent visit, the area by the new large paper mill looked like a park, and there was no stench! Some changes are very positive.
The family with the father who worked in the cotton mill was remarkable. Both parents worked separate shiftl so my friend and her brother always had parents at home. Her father and uncles had built their tidy, sturdy house themselves, so they avoided renting from mill owners. They had indoor plumbing while the relatives still used outhouses. (Still common in South then.) They cared for an invalid grandmother at home. They planted a huge garden on the empty lot next to them and canned everything that could be canned. Her father always enjoyed growing plants and had built his own greenhouse in the backyard. When I-95 was extended by the town, he managed to get landscaping contracts with most of the hotels. He was now his own boss and they could quit the mill! (I learned the last information later from my father who visited one time.)
Hope it hasn't been too long winded. The family whom I knew for only three years has inspired me for years, though I had to be older to appreciate it. Cheers.
Thank you for sharing this. I had several friends whose parents were upper management in these mills, so my perspective was perhaps not as compassionate as it might have been, but one of my mother's best friends taught in the school in the mill village, and she was full of stories that made me realize how fortunate I was.
Biting commentary. Well written.
You know, I agree with most of what you have written, except I don'[t think Clinton and Obama "simply obeyed rich men north of Richmond". Other than that, your account of Regan et al is spot on, IMHO.
KMcGady - Obama didn't allow single payer at the healthcare debate table. That alone speaks to whom he obeyed. The "solution" they came up with was a huge gift to the medical industrial complex. It essentially cemented their power, and the resulting travesty of medical "care" is the result. So yes, he obeyed those rich white men.
I dont know all that much about the affordable care act. I do know of the idea that corporations can come up with better solutions than those of the people. It doesnt work. The way a corporation works is it will figure out how to benefit from whatever system is put in place in order to always maintain dominance and power over that industry. Thus never breaking the vicious cycle of corporate greed and abuse causing the problems that make symptoms they are trying to fix.
Should've read your comment before I submitted mine, Paul. Exactly so!
Read Anand Ghiradas Winners Take All The Elite Charade of Changing the world. Clinton believes in helping people, its how they are helped is the problem in his thinking. He believes private corporations can make up in philanthropy for what the government cant afford to do. Of course if it wasnt for all the corporate and billionaire tax breaks the government could help people oddles more than private citizens or corporations ever would care too. Obama wise, ugg, read Robert Reichs The System. Who Rigged it and how we fixed it. During the mortgage lending crisis of 2008 Obama bailed out a buttload of millionaire bankers and big banks that were (to important to fail). Zero of the people who had bad mortgages were given anything and many were heavily debt ridden and many lost their homes leading to a great reduction of wealth for the middle class. Affordable health care I applaud (I think it should go farthe). Bailing out banks that had shoddy loans no so much.
The ACA was a bone thrown to the people so Obama could renege on his promise of universal healthcare while handing billions to the insurance companies. The ACA has helped millions of people, no question, but overall, the coverage is sketchy and the premiums go up every year. If you're not completely destitute, ACA coverage can cost more than employer-paid coverage.
Succession would only make things worse. The South has to learn about degrees of responsibility. Kindergarten teaches gradients. Then negotiation becomes possible, and you get what you want without violence.
We need to add to the “Enter the Mule” description of Ronnie, that all the policy decisions needed to also be vented by Nancy and her astrologer.
Could not agree more on all points, Michael. Excellent summary!
Amen! Thank you Michael!!!😳
"Unprecedented" is like how "Breaking News" got abused.
"Unconstitutional" would be a better way of putting it...
It is scary how "Unconstitutional" has been normalized.
And "unlawful"
Yes, exactly.
The amount of money being paid to the controlling officers of various concerns is a sticking point between labor and management. There is absolutely no justification for the vast sum of money being paid to these people. This gross inequity acts like a wedge that further separates mind from muscle. There was a situation in the past that spoke to this problem, the people in power suggested the less fortunate should "eat cake." With the transparency given to all positions within a company, pay levels are no longer a closely guarded secret. I understand the importance held by a CEO in any company but the unacceptable inequalities found in their pay levels only breeds resentment. I feel bonuses instead of inflated pay scales would serve to balance the differences found in any company. People have a basic need to feel wanted, needed, and respected. Supplementing their income partially through a bonus system would take a certain amount of pressure off of management by asking labor to accept quarterly checks based upon their overall efforts geared toward production. The bottom lines for these companies would spell the size of the checks given to its employees. Again, transparency would go a long way in letting labor see their true worth in any work situation. Share the wealth, a content labor force produces a better product hands down.
Our government should not enact a law governing executive pay. It would be too much interference with free enterprise. Instead, we should tax capital gains as ordinary income. We should examine how my proposal would work, including its affect on investment in new ventures.
Enact the law AND tax capital gains at the same rate as salaries.
Gerald--We have common ground--
Perhaps the Board of Directors pay should be limited to a certain percentage.
Donald ,
Publicly traded companies must post reports that shed light on their operations. Private equity firms inflict at least as much damage on
us and are essentially immune from the requirements to share information about CEO pay and a host of other issues.
Paul--Thanks for the info--
There is not a CEO worth $20-30 million a year!
Gaile--I totally agree. They should be on a bonus system like everyone else.
Absolutely 👍🏻
I want to sign the petition Dr. Reich - is the website overloaded or need a new link?
Let me see if I can fix this.
Hello! Yes, Dr. Reich you are helping fix this democracy every day.
Cheers :)
Same problem here. Kept giving me error messages.
Me,too.
It works!
It works now!
Yes! For me as well. Signed and sent.
Same here.
I would say he is an "anomaly" per se, Mr. Olsen. He is simply what the Trumplican party HAS BEEN since the first dementia-addled president dribbled all over us in the 1960s: corrupt, shameless, supremely bigoted, hateful, stupid and yes, EVIL.
Bush and much moreso his son, Dubbya', just hid their bigotry and coruption a little better! (Dubbya' didn't hide his stupidity too well though.)
A carnival barker for a >"Killer Klowns" show<, to be sure!
I wish trump were an anomaly but this country has always been full of hucksters and carnival barkers. After all, Europe sent only their finest minds and citizens to these shores, right? Likewise, PT Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”. Rachel Maddow’s current work as well as plenty of historians have laid out for us how tfg is the farthest thing from the exception but rather the rule. The ‘unpresidented’ part about him is, he ran for President-and won! The suckers and Russia wedged him into the Oval Office for four, excruciating years.
First I've ever heard of anyone not knowing the word "unprecedented." But that's okay. Your description of Trump is dead on.
I’m a country bumpkin who was never good @ vocabulary, sorry 😞
No apologies necessary. It was a good submission
Thank you
I find it difficult to believe you’d never heard “unprecedented” before trump, but I deeply agree with the rest.
Trump isn't an anomaly he's merely another power hungry person prepared to do evil things to gain dominance. He cares only for his own large arse. He's Mr. Bear Squash You All Flat from the childrens book circa 1950. That s__t got defeated when the other animals moved into an unsquashable abandoned truck tire. Our truck tire is the coming election. Now lets quit wringing our hands, organize, and vote Dump and his co-conspirators onto the next bus to Siberia.
All that EVIL needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing
ALL ABOARD
Keith,
Why does everyone who writes the word SHOULD also have a sub stack...I don't even know that that is...BUT WHENEVER I HEAR "SHOULD" I RUN THE OTHER WAY...for obvious reasons...
Instead of should, I recommend DO...do you want something? get up and make it... or in our society, buy it....
Thanks for listening!!!
your buddy, avi
Should would could must are words teachers are encouraged not to use with children. But I read them as suggestions, and in a conversation with adults, I accept them as that
Will DO. Thanks
Truth!
I’m sick of hearing it too. The only unprecedented event to take place was probably the bite of the apple thing in the Garden of Eden. It was all downhill after that.
I can’t use the form. When I enter my information, and click the “Start Writing” button, I get the message that an error has occurred...please try again. I don’t think the script works for MACs.
Same here and I don’t have a MAC.
Same here
It doesn't work on my Windows computer. I get a "Don't Panic" message and that they are working on the problem.
....ditto !
The same thing happened to me, and I’m using an Apple machine.
Didn't function with Mac/Safari or Mac/Firefox on this end of things as well (good catch nonetheless Elizabeth Zelinger!)...
You can go directly to the U.S. House or Senate website and use the form your own representative provides. Letters in your own words are taken more seriously than submitting a letter prewritten by someone else.
Thank you for writing, Carolyn. Earlier this morning, I did precisely as you suggested, and, frankly, was able to write a more persuasive letter because I could work from text Reich had provided.
Sorry. Let me see if I can fix this.
Functioning now (thank you!)...
= )
It doesn’t work on an iPad either.
That's where I tried it -- didn't work.
Same here, using a Mac. Could it be that someone rigged the site?
I had the same problem. Tried doing it on my iPhone. I also have a Mac
Same thing happened to me and I use a PC.
I just posted the same thing and I'm using an Android tablet.
Same error on my iPhone
I don't need to receive any more daily emails from all those organizations sponsoring the message, so I just used my reps' government websites. If you are used to writing/calling your reps, it's not hard at all.
It just worked for me on my IMac. Try again.
I have an I pad. I,too, was rejected.
apparently this error is non platform or browser specific because i tried it w/ 4 different browsers on 2 different devices, my desktop pc and android phone... Action Network (the host) has to fix it.
I would support this, but I’d prefer to see a Wealth Tax and remove the income cap for payroll tax contributions.
why not both?
Even better.
The latter being an easy fix for SS and Medicare solvency that never seems to enter the discussion.
Absolutely.
Wealth has already been taxed when earned. Taxing it again would be unfair. Instead, a more reasonable tax would be to tax capital gains as ordinary income.
That would also harm middle class Americans
Also, studies have shown that chief executive decisions are only right about 50% of the time. So, no, they are NOT worth the premium they are being paid.
Then the shareholders can vote our the CEO. We do not want our government to do this.
Yes, that's about as effective as "Vote the bums out!" when gerrymandering ensures that we can't vote the bums out. I can easily see corporate charters and rules written to achieve the same ends.
Hi Constance, do you believe Congress has the power and/or is willing to write a law that would govern CEO pay of private corporations like XOM and APPLE?
The courts would slap down every effort at such legislation, either by saying it violates the interstate commerce clause, or by stating they don't have jurisdiction because they are not American companies. They are global. And again, that's one more way to evade this law - relocate their CEOs on paper to one of their non-U.S. business addresses.
The ratio has squared between 1965 & now -- from 20:1 to 400:1
These graphs from wikipedia say it best. What does 400:1 one look like compared to 20:1. We are the flat line the black and red on...
Net personal wealth in the U.S. since 1962. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#:~:text=As%20of%20late%202022%2C%20according,a%20total%20of%20%2443.45%20trillion.
The black and red lines equals 300 milllion people. Lorded over what is about 22,000,000 millionaires and billionares. Which is only 6.5% of the population. 1 feudal lord billionaire and 30,000 millionaire pyscofants for every 420,000 (black/red and 3.5% green) people. Id like to see if the same percentages lineup in company CEO boards as well.
What a stunt! There is ZERO chance this passes as law. Virtue signaling does not drive results for the average American.
Forget ‘average’ American, it would be useful if the Federal Minimum Wage increased. Hello? Can we start there where there’s at least a chance at success?
CEO pay and stock buy backs are one of main reasons for lower worker pay. Shareholders pay the CEO more, he sends stock buy backs (legal embezzelment) their way. That comes from illuminating jobs and wage suppression. I have watched this horror show combination rip apart 2 companies. If we dont address wealth inequality of those at the top a Federal minimum wage increase will only mean that the depths of the bottom that companies can go to will be higher. The company will figure out a way to drop higher paid salaries to that new bottom which will reduce the median salary anyway. I agree minimum wage is important. All my wifes recent wage increases were from state minimum wage bumps. It helps and is needed and so is limits on CEO pay.
I think the answer is really going to come from the workers themselves in most cases their unions. Somebody needs to tell these guys either you're going to shape up, pay the people properly or we're going on strike.
The other thing we need to do is force corporations to not increase the price of their products or services because of this increase in an amount over the actual increase. Corporations are notarious for taking expenses and making them into profits. In other words if they have an increase in cost of 5%, they will take that 5% and add another 10% to it for their profit and say that it's because of the strike or the workers pay or the workers' compensation. In other words they're going to lie to increase their profits. That needs to stop.
Unions seem to be the answer I have seen as well. There is no amount of bellyaching or protest that has availed employees in my company any sort of raise commensurate with inflation. Even though the company has benefitted greatly from additonal fees and record profits. The company sent us a survey to find out what we wanted and it was weighted with questions for those not paying attention that would give the answer the company wanted. To be used in the future to prove that workers "wanted" these things. They then used the answers to enact more cuts in form of removing carry over PTO. Would you want 40 hours of PTO or $1000. Unless you are getting minimum wage at $15 an hour. This is an insult. And even then $1000 at taxed at bonus rate. So the only input they used from us was to use a rigged test to take more monry away from us and make it seem like they were helping us out. In addition after a massive backlash on this new policy we were offered one week of PTO we could BORROW against our own time and if we quit or were laid off before accumulating the time back we would have to reimburse the company. Lean six sigma. The only way to get any sort of deal is to play hardball and force them to the table. Yelling about it does nothing. The time for talking with management is over.
Tell this to the employees of Microsoft, Apple, Alpha, etc . Their CEO’s pay is in the stratosphere. I know some of the folks who are working there. They have excellent salaries and I have never heard them complain about the incomes of their CEO’s.
Hartmut I fully respect your candor, and conversation. I work for one of the monopolies in the etc, column. If you are one of the folks who has been laid off or one of the many even in the non etc. companies above who has gotten a 3% minor pay increases when the CEO has gotten an 18% or 200% pay increase there is something to gripe about. A company will pay better wages when its not a monopoly. It works hard to become a monopoly. Once it has joined with another company it lays off an equal amount of people that it hired with the new company. I have seen 2 mergers and this second one has been murderous. We hired folks right after the last merger. All those folks were not being paid enough to live on one income with the 2nd tier job that they were in (one was living outnof his car). Then all of these new hires were laid off and a bunch of veterans (with quite higher pay) too. This reduced the median wages of everyone in the company. Before the layoffs the company stock was sky rocketing. Every year it would be layoffs followed by CEO pay increase and stock buy backs. Then higher profits, more CEO pay recently increased 200% and even a higher number of stock buy backs. All told stock buy backs in the form of $60B as in Billion. So that is $60B the company is giving to shareholders when it already has $170B of outstanding debt it is doinf nothing about. Thats like have a big house loan and taking out $60 billion additional loan to fund a fun gettaway vacation. This doesnt mention the previous company I worked for Nortel that went under and my friend who also worked for them lost his entire life savings as his Nortel equivalent stocks debt was only satisfied after the shareholder got their money first.
Mergers are regulated. Employees who invest their retirement savings in the stock of the company where they work are in double jeopardy. They would be wise to diversify.
Absolutely it was insane. Back in those days the people who had Nortel stock refused to believe the company would go under. He had changed his entire contribution from 401k to the stock purchase option and then simply never changed it. Denial cant bring back all their lost money. Its sad that it happened and its sad that he is losing his house and his only retirement is SSI.
I totally understand, these mergers can be devastating to employees.
Surely you jest. Check out those companies. Use H1B visas to avoid using American workers. Use "stringers" as "outside contractors" to avoid paying "employees." In Apple's case most production is in China.
Microsoft listed job requirements, must work at Bremerton, Washington. One way in, one way out.
Oh, damn forgot about that. Yeah, good engineering jobs with 6 month contracts (lest they be deemed employees) leave these H1B Visa guys scrambling when their contractor is up to get whatever job they can (at whatever wage) or be kicked out of the country. Forgot about that. Before we started laying off folks I have seen at least 15 H1B folks in that cycle of boom or bust. It is definitely a way of keeping people "in their place" with few rights and little options. I believe our immigration department is part of the problem of enforcing of these laws that make people work for less money. Look at the H1Bs and look at undocumented. It helps business to have undocumented because they will work for less than minimum wage and have no SSI benefits in the end. So immigration lets them stay here to work but not legally. Then makes the immigrant pay a bunch of legal fees and filing fees to attempt to become legal. We might as well have legalized the INS as Coyotes. The wages lost to immigrants through double taxation and lack of benefits and instability is probably equivalent too the exhorbant interest rates Coyotes charge on their cross the border loans. Legal and illegal loan sharking. Between the Coyotes and the INS we have people in this country who are indentured servents (NOT KIDDDING) for 5 years or more.
@Bill Reitz. Actually, I heard those cases. I heard 22 kinds of visa cases. At one time I was on the Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals.
One of our staff attorneys had an office covered with files from floor to ceiling just from Microsoft.
If I only knew this stuff when I practiced law. I try to tell young lawyers that if they want to make a living they should look into this stuff, but youth is wasted on the young.
Makes sense. Microsoft the company that got sued because it had so many contractors working as contractors year over year that the court had them converted to employees. Contract work is contract work I get that. When a person leaves due to contract over stay and is immediately replaced with a new contractee its depressing. You build up relationships with these folks. Sometimes they come back sometimes they get full time jobs elsewhere. Their job duty usually is important for many years, but the employer likes them light and cheap. I only wish the best for the ones that have their families in tow. What a ride that has go be.
You do know that Inequality Media (Reich’s start-up) has used contractors. Sometimes it is what is win-win. I mean a lot of people like being their own boss and making their own hours. I don’t agree with bashing contractors and people who work in the Gig Economy!
If they do, expect no fringe benefits Big business does it to avoid responsibility, but some companies, like Microsoft have been sued and lost. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2589538/it-personnel-microsoft-to-pay-97-million-to-settle-permatemp-case.html#:~:text=Microsoft%20Corp.,the%20workers%20and%20their%20attorneys.
I think a big help on reducing CEO pay would be to require companies to have a non-employee independent chairman of the board. The board sets the CEOs pay, and when most CEOs are also the chairman of the board, you can see the conflict of the CEO basically setting his own pay!
Hey that's just like the new on supreme Court of the United States. It's a stray thought
Most stockholders don't care much about excessive CEO pay. They care about stock price and dividend rate. Practically every company has an advisory "Say on Pay" on the yearly proxy, where you can vote against the salary of the senior executives. Stockholders almost always vote to 'approve" their senior executive pay! Any changes will have to come from the government (the CEO Act mentioned by Mr. Reich).
There's hardly an American who doesn't own stock somehow, but most of us hold it in funds of one sort or another. I'm wondering if that's why much of the pressure is off.
Good point. Stock funds are frequently the largest shareholders, so have greatest influence. However, I am asked to vote for my individual stocks that I own, but I have never been asked how a stock fund that I own should vote. I think they should ask us!
When shareholders approve "say on pay", it's not the role of government to block their action. If one does not like executive pay, one can decline to buy stock in that company.
Agree that you can "vote with your feet", but I don't see how that reduces CEO pay, which is the theme of today's forum.
A minimum wage increase does not address the issue of CEO pay. Taxing capital gains as ordinary income would address CEO after tax pay. California taxes capital gains as ordinary income.
Mike S ; so they can game the value of money?
Mike, Bernie tried to increase the minimum wage, and was sidelined. So, probably no more chance of getting that done than putting an excise tax on obscene CEO pay. But that's no reason to stop trying to get it done.
If wages go up, though, companies will simply raise prices to [more than] cover the cost.
Competition keeps prices down, however there is not much competition.
Which us why there needs to be a LOT more trust-busting going on. But not happenin' as long as the oligarchs are in charge.
But it is a start of the conversation and debate. When democrats win the house, senate and presidency it may become a law.
I don’t understand how it is a “start”. It’s useless signaling without any chance of result. It’s only pandering to a base which already knows CEO pay is high.
I guess there’s so much slack time, congressmen can spend a bunch of time writing a bill they know won’t pass. The only good I see is that it probably helps in fundraising - not governing!
Fair objection.
Can't sign. Led it error on account for Action Network. Error in link?
Same; see the post from Elizabeth Zelinger (try sorting 'Chronological')...
The link to Patriotic Millionaires and writing to Congress will feel good, as will a manageable donation to the cause. However, they, the CEO, aren’t listening, and they will continue to keep up the distorted pay gap because they can, and it’s all currently legal, it seems. The nearly 63 thousand letters won’t see many eyes. The gridlock in getting anything through Congress to counter CEO pay will be a nightmare even if the Democrats held both houses, the executive, and at least two more SCJs retire and are replaced by more liberal ones. It’s terrible, and for those who do not want to see DJT back in the WH as well in 2024, this battle for a 50-1 CEO to median worker pay is worth taking on, albeit a vast fish to fry given the players involved. There is too little common good going around these days. Couple it all with AI reality fearmongering (real, imagined, and conspiratorially), and the pro-CEO pay crowd must be wringing their hands in sheer joy currently. Sad really. Shame on them!
"Rule 10b-18, the rule proposed in 1982, gives executives total power (and a blank check) to determine their own incentive-based compensation." In a Forbes article by Arne Alsin, 2/28/2017, Alsin explains that for most of the 20th Century, stock buybacks were illegal because they were considered a form of market manipulation. I'm pretty sure I also learned that from Robert Reich as well. Alsin goes on to say that a solution would be to give shareholders the right to vote on stock buybacks since they often don't benefit while executives do well.
With the proposed legislation, wouldn't executives decide if the corporation will take the tax hit for too high a ratio between CEO and worker pay? The shareholders could vote in a new board if they did that. Right? Somebody help me here. This is not my area of expertise.
A share buyback is when companies pay shareholders to buy back their own shares, cancel them and, ultimately, reduce share capital. While fewer shares remain in circulation, remaining shareholders get both a larger stake in the company and a higher return on future dividends. Minority shareholder lose their stock -- are bought out.
Shareholders have the right to bring shareholder derivative suits. Can't tell you how often minority shareholders are screwed up and down and sideways.
A shareholder (stockholder) derivative suit is a lawsuit brought by a shareholder or group of shareholders on behalf of the corporation against the corporation's directors, officers, or other third parties who breach their duties. The claim of the suit is not personal but belongs to the corporation. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/shareholder_derivative_suit#:~:text=A%20shareholder%20(stockholder)%20derivative%20suit,but%20belongs%20to%20the%20corporation.
Depending on state law shareholders have a right to enforce the legal duties owed to them by corporate directors and officers through direct, or individual, lawsuits. Can address personal losses that result from a corporation’s breach of duty – especially so in small and closely held corporations where minority shareholders have been victimized by majority shareholder oppression.
A lot of the precedent is in Delaware. E.G. A Hertz Global Holdings Inc. investor sued affiliates of its private equity backers, Certares Management LLC and Knighthead Capital Management LLC, over their role in a $2.8 billion stock buyback program..
https://pro.bloombergtax.com/reports/onpoint-irs-releases-initial-guidance-on-stock-buyback-tax/?trackingcode=BTXF23109393&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&keyword=stock%20buybacks&matchtype=p&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAjrarBhAWEiwA2qWdCOJds4rHjt3NeR7-1QlBvWO-NsEbR04nTmks8jvAMeMQXDE5XlVaVBoC7CQQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Will this significantly alter CEO pay and the CEO/worker pay ratios buy halting some buybacks? I can't get the information because I am not affiliated with a company.
My husband helpfully suggested that we “eat the rich,” however.
I cannot imagine they would taste good or be nutritious. Might be poisoned meat! Like pigs wallowing in slop.
I dunno' . . . I bet Bunkerboy would be pretty good, as he would likely taste like the berders he loves so much. Nice and tender too! Then again, he would be EXTREMELY greasy and fatty.
Another part of the repair should be removing the artificial cap on the amount of salary that is subject to Social Security tax.
It would seem that one cause of the CEO meteoric rise in compensation is a result the focus on a company's stock price performance and the reward in shares of stock to these CEOs. Perhaps they should focus on that as well.
HEADS-UP: I just used the link in today's email newsletter to go to actionnetwork.org. I filled out the form, but when I clicked the "Start Writing" button, I got an error. Three times in a row. I checked to make sure that my fields were filled in properly, etc.
Get error message when trying to send. Could this me intentional? Someone doesn’t want this message to get out!
Someone said it didn’t work on a non-MAC, too. Seems it’s safe to assume it doesn’t work, period.
Maybe requiring companies to publish all salaries in the public domain by category would get some attention.
Want to hear some shrieking? Have the IRS publish the reported income of same!
They are published,every year without fail. The 10K report and the proxy report.They give you all the info on a company that you need.
The human race works on the basis of the facts don't fit in with what I want to see so the facts are wrong.
CEO of Wal mart is paid $1.5 million per year.The rest is performance bonus paid in shares,an option if you like.Don't meet the performance hurdles and the options expire worthless.
As an example if they meet revenue/ profit targets they get the chance to buy ,in the future,say $25 million worth of shares at $20 million .They still have to pay $20 million to get the shares.Then it will be reported ( shock,horror) wages of $25 million .Depending on the IRS they will need to sell some of the shares to pay CGT,and of course to come up with $20 million.
You can buy as many shares as you like,or choose to come up with any excuse at all to refuse to spend money to buy them .
They'll give you the 5 year return,Wal mart at a base of $100 five years ago with dividends reinvested was worth ~ $148 at balance date. Nobody has ever had $100 to spare. An easy problem to solve,borrow $100 and meet the interest payments.Say the interest is 6% then you need $6 a year. Amazingly the picture instantly changes,across an entire lifetime nobody has ever had a spare $6 at anytime in their entire lives.
"They"get richer,you get richer.
“This is part of the story of how American capitalism has become rigged in favor of those at the top. It leads us directly to oligarchy — rule by the richest few, putting democracy at risk.”
Unfortunately, we’ve always been an oligarchy since our founding. Originally, only white male Christian’s, who were land or business owners could participate in democracy, as well as participate in creating our laws and institutions that continue to favor the rich.
As the industrial revolution emerged, the oligarchs became Robber Barrons or Industrialists. They wielded even more power than the oligarchs do today. They even tried to stage a coup against FDR in 1933 and install Major General Smedley as a puppet president; although Smedley would refuse to go along with the scheme, known as the Business Plot. He would later be ridiculed by the press after testifying before Congress, including the NYT’s, because the rich always stick together. And like the early 1900’s, the press is continually being controlled by major corporations or billionaires. So much for the fourth estate!
That said, nothing has changed since the industrial revolution, except the players and a few men and women being allowed to join the club, and reap the benefits!of classism.
We always talk about the patriarchy and the impact it has on the rest of us. Women and people of color continue to fret that the system is rigged against them. And while it’s true, the system wasn’t built to favor all white male Christian’s, which is why there has always been a disconnect between most white men and the most marginalized in our society.
Italians and Irish and even rich Jews were never part of the club until the post-WW2 era. And in some cases, they’re still just tokens. And the reason most men refuse to believe their lives are any better than women and minorities is because most white people struggle as well; even given the advantages they attain above the rest of society.
The system is definitely built to serve some over others, but it’s a two tiered system. It built to serve some white Christian’s at the top, and while capitalism still allows newcomers to join; it’s just a select few. Until recently, women and minorities were persona non grata. The middle class has over time lessened the disparities between the sexes and classes, but hardly enough to satisfy most of us who still feel disillusioned and marginalized in society.
That said, in today’s world the system fails most of us, and for those at the top, or the upper middle class, you still have privileges they allude the rest of society. Especially opportunities to attend college and make contacts to help with employment opportunities.
As for solutions to this problem. Society had been addressing these issues since the civil rights era; however, every time this country takes one step forward, there is a force that tries to squash change and force us to take two steps back. It’s Newton’s third law of Motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction!
Bottom line: with todays political dysfunction and misinformation and lies circulating faster than the speed of light, it’s hard to know “up from down,” so I wouldn’t bet any time soon for any positive change. This will be especially true if Trump is re-elected, in which case, there will be change coming--good and hard; just not the kind of change this country wants or needs.
It hasnt been the same. From baby boomer 1945 to about 1977 there was an increase in poor, middle and upper middle, and rich wages that was inline with incresse in productuon. A company produced more and all the levels of income rose equally. This was largely due to the power of unions to fight for pay increases and as a voting block. Come GE CEO Jack Welch and he showe other CEOs how to make ever more money by laying off tons of people and closing down buildings. Many companies copied the six sigma layoff schedule (mine included) and the CEO and share holders are dancing on piles of money. After that poor, middle and upper middle wages stagnated and inflation wise have gone down. The highest income earners in the US saw there income/wealth skyrocket. For that span of 32 years it wasn't always the same. It has to be explained that we have had a better way of doing things before and can again. Things dont have to forever be bad just because have been recently. As voters in a democracy we still chose our politicians. The fact that Trump his backers and many of these pseudo fascist Billionaries fight so hard against the electorate is because the system to whatever extent still has the capability of removing their power and they know it.
I didn’t say the country remained static, I said the power of the oligarchs or billionaire class hasn’t diminished; they now reap even more power; especially since the SC gutted voting rights and allowed dark and unlimited money into politics.
Whether billionaires feel they can be usurped is irrelevant since these people tend to be extremely paranoid to begin with. Their feelings aren’t reality. And it’s not the masses they fear, it’s their rivals, competition and political enemies that keep them up at night.
Otherwise, I agree with your analysis, you just interpreted my analysis differently than its intended meaning.