What happened in 1980 that might have set us on this trend?
Compensation for chief executives at American companies grew 15 percent in 2011 after a 28 percent rise in 2010, part of a larger trend that has seen CEO pay skyrocket over the last three decades. Workers, on the other hand, have been left behind.
Since 1978, CEO pay at American firms has risen 725 percent, more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the same time period, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute…
You can thank St. Ronnie for putting us on this path. You can thank the modern GOP for assuring that we can’t get off it.
And…?
And we can thank Obama and the so called “democrats” in congress for missing a golden opportunity (the financial meltdown) to punish/reign in the banksters/CEO’s which are drawing some hefty salaries.
Frontline is currently running a three part series on the financial meltdown. Part II had details on the meeting Obama called with all of the heads of the main banks caught up in the fiasco, Lord Blanfiend from Goldman Sucks, etc.
“Funny” part is, these guys were actually scared of what might happen in this meeting. They had seen the street protests, they had already been raked over the coals by the congressional hearing, they’d heard the talk regarding nationalization of one or two of the larger troubled banks, etc. They knew the people advising Obama, Volker, Summers, etc., were tough, smart guys.
The result of this meeting? More or less nothing. The banksters, briefly speaking to the press after the meeting, were visibly relieved. They knew Obama was not going to do anything “radical”.
Instead, Geithner won out with his bank “stress tests”, which one expert in the Frontline special pointed out were more or less bogus.
The banks got a massive taxpayer funded, no strings attached bail out. Recent financial reporting indicates everything is back to business as usual and some of the banks are even larger than before the meltdown.
“Sorry”, it’s not enough to point out/lame blame on Reagan and the pro-corporate GOP for inequitable CEO pay- when Obama and the “democrats” do little to nothing regarding the problem- even when they had the opportunity to do so.
It gets back to the fact that regarding many major policy issues, and our financial elite, we have a one party, oligarchal system.