10 CEOs Who Got Rich By Squeezing Workers
—By Josh Harkinson| Thu May. 12, 2011

10 CEOs Who Got Rich By Squeezing Workers | Mother Jones

Corporate profits grew 38.8 percent in 2010, the biggest increase since 1950. But while CEOs earned an average of 20 percent more last year, many Americans continued to lose their jobs and benefits. The insecurity of the middle class has a lot to do with how executives are paid. Bonuses pegged to stock prices encourage CEOs to mercilessly outsource and downsize, slashing costs to boost profits. The result is that more corporate leaders are getting paid at the expense of average workers. Here are 10 of the worst offenders:




*Duke's pay would have dropped even more had Walmart not stopped calculating his bonus based on same-store sales, which have declined over the past two years.

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But you could try and defend that. After all, part of the CEO's job is to cut costs. Firing people is a difficult task and, if you do it well, why not be paid for that? However, it pales in comparison to the following....

25 Giant Corporations That Paid Their CEOs More Than They Paid Uncle Sam | Mother Jones

25 Giant Corporations That Paid Their CEOs More Than They Paid Uncle Sam
—By Josh Harkinson| Thu Sep. 1, 2011

It might make sense for a small business to pay its top brass more than it doles out to Uncle Sam in taxes, but what if that company has tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in profits? Well, this is America folks. What follows is a list of 25 mega corporations that paid one guy—their CEO—more money than what they spent on their entire federal tax bills last year. The same companies averaged $1.9 billion each in profits—money that was earned, in many cases, by cutting thousands of American jobs.



Source: Institute for Policy Studies

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Basically, my point is that we should not worry all that much about the top 1%. It's really the top 0.1% who are taking the piss...

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Basically, my point is that we should not worry all that much about the top 1%. It's really the top 0.1% who are taking the piss...

And just how much did it cost to buy you off?

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Oh, I am darn cheap. Good value for money too!

But I am just arguing that it's stupid to debate, say, tax bands. What's the difference between a guy earning $35k and one earning $120k? A measly $90k. Yet, at the top, where taxes (if they are paid at all) are essentially flat, things jump from $120k to $2.0 mil to $20 mil to $several billions.

As I said before, taxes should follow the income curve and thus be exponential, not gradual.

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Actually I think the 1% is too refined. the bulk of outright accumulation may happen there but their bag carriers and flunkies should be in the dock too.

Wow. I thought you were interested in sorting things out, not exacting revenge...

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When you've finished that I doubt there'll be a whole lot of people left. Most of us just let them get on with it when times were good, I know I did.

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As a failure to become a bag carrier and flunky, I wonder what my treatment would be?

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Wow. I thought you were interested in sorting things out, not exacting revenge...

That's an unfortunate necessity, not something I especially approve.

Quote:

When you've finished that I doubt there'll be a whole lot of people left. Most of us just let them get on with it when times were good, I know I did.

The Japanese samurai were unusually large as a ruling class, running to about 10%. The european monarchies were about 5%. So the irony is that if its true that only 1% or 0.1% are the real culprits in our society, then we are even more concentrated than they ever were.