From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/14-1
by Ralph Nader
Published on Thursday, March 14, 2013 by Common Dreams
Walmart CEO Mike Duke makes approximately $11,000 an hour. Think about that — $11,000 every hour. Think about an hour of your day, the tasks you accomplish, and the compensation you receive from your employer. If you are an average American worker, you could add up all your daily work hours and that of your close friends, family, and fellow coworkers and it still won’t even come close to what Mike Duke makes in a single hour of his work day. He was the 46th highest paid CEO in America in 2012, according to Forbes.
American CEO’s are the highest paid in the world. As of 2011, Corporate CEO’s in America make 340 times what the average worker makes. As a comparison, in 1980, CEO pay was only 42 times more than the average worker. For decades now, the compensation packages of the top one percent have been steadily increasing — income inequality is a runaway train, with the divide between the corporate oligarchy and the average citizen growing larger and larger every year. Even in the aftermath of the Wall Street induced economic crash, CEO pay continued to grow. The wages of the middle and lower class have suffered and stagnated at the hands of corporate leadership, regardless of business performance or shareholder value. The top dogs are rewarded by rubber-stamping company boards.The phrase “income inequality” has become a gross understatement — it might be more fitting to call it “income tyranny,” as corporate America has created a new class of CEO monarchy, who believe they are entitled to everything and accountable to no one. Perhaps nothing illustrates this issue better than their suppressing their federal minimum wage — stagnant at $7.25 an hour; and far behind the minimum wage in 1968, which inflation adjusted, would be $10.50 today. Moreover, worker productivity has doubled since 1968.
The defense from the corporate world is that such enormous pay packages are necessary to attract the top talent in the business world and to reward them for their efforts. The people of Switzerland don’t buy it — after billions in losses by banking giant UBS and the cutting of thousands of jobs by pharmaceutical company Novartis, nearly 68 percent of Swiss voters supported a referendum to give shareholders the final say on executive compensation. American CEO’s should take note of this reaction by an outraged citizenry.
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/14-1
