Doak: Rich getting richer, thanks to American socialism (good read!)

[leQ]

The most obvious example is the compensation of corporate CEOs. Their obscene pay packages cannot be attributed to the invisible hand of the marketplace. If there were a free market in executives, CEOs would be bidding against one another to see who would work for the lowest salary, just as ordinary workers are pitted against one another to hold down wages. CEO salaries are not set by the marketplace. They are set by compensation committees made up of fellow insiders who have a vested interest in keeping all executive compensation far above what a free market would set.

Socialism for the CEOs. Capitalism for the workers.

When workers are laid off, they can expect 26 weeks of unemployment insurance. Then they are thrown into the cold, cruel marketplace to fend for themselves.

When CEOs run companies into the ground, they can expect golden parachutes that will leave them rich beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary mortals, able to live comfortably the rest of their lives.

Capitalism for the working stiffs. Socialism for the bosses.

the whole article is a good read.
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050613/OPINION01/506130303/1035/OPINION

[BlueEyedSon]

1. All part of "Corporate Welfare", the system is rigged AND the gov't

gives them a sweet deal too (taxes, regs, contracts, etc....).

[indepat]

5. You've nailed the Repukes' job number one on the head

[Captain Hilts]

8. 26 weeks of compensation? My brother got only two!

He was with KMart for 24 years and with about a third of the chain's other managers, got laid off. The state of Florida saw to it he had two weeks of severence pay after 24 years with KMart.

[slor]

2. Good article n/t

[whistle]

3. Germany's National Socialism Party and Italy's fascist party....

...pretty much operated the same way and became the European model which spread to Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.

<snip>
Fascism Anyone?
Laurence W. Britt

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.


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Free Inquiry readers may pause to read the “Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” on the inside cover of the magazine. To a secular humanist, these principles seem so logical, so right, so crucial. Yet, there is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of these principles. It is fascism. And fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.

We are two-and-a-half generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, although constant reminders jog the consciousness. German and Italian fascism form the historical models that define this twisted political worldview. Although they no longer exist, this worldview and the characteristics of these models have been imitated by protofascist1 regimes at various times in the twentieth century. Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities.

Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi. This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.

<more>
<link> http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm

[ixion]

4. this 'game' is stacked on sooooo many levels

And it goes beyond simple compensation. You remember that whole stock option ploy? Well, they've got that worked out, too. I joined a company a few years back and was given a generous options package. A couple years (and two CEO's down the line) here comes this supposed 'hot shot'. This guy proceeds to turn down lucrative offers that would have paid off well for the stock holders, and instead does several reverse splits, effectively killing off the value of the stocks issued to those of us who were there from the beginning.

So now my stock, as with all the other options I've paid for in blood over the past 6 years, is virtually worthless.

Of course, the aforementioned CEO's stock is quite valuable.

:grr:

[getmeouttahere]

6. The more I hear about this....

the more I understand why comedian Lewis Black said about these human pieces of sh** (specifically the Enron & Cable guys)

"Why didn't the employees rise up as one and slay them"?

[brainshrub]

7. This article is misleading:

"The original theory of socialism was that the government would own all the factories, the transportation system, etc., and would operate them for the benefit of the public."

That's not socialism, that's Communism. The idea behind Socialism is that the state has a responsibility to provide for the basic needs of all it's citizens. This runs from the notion that the wealth of a nation should be used to benefit all its citizens, not just the ones with access to capital.

I Democrat is similar, but we trust open-markets and govt regulation to accomlish the same adgenda.

Anarchist --> Communist --> Socialist --> Democrat --> Republican --> NeoConservative --> Fascist.

I didn't put "Green" or "Libertarian" because the above line is two dimensional. A better way to map political ideology is to use the Political Compass.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/

[Igel]

10. I always understood classical communist theory as

saying that communism would be reached when the state withered, no longer being necessary, with collective ownership of all means of production by the workers. No state, no government to do the owning.

This may have been modified later, but it's still the definition I use when there's no further context (such as Soviet or Chinese communism).

[brainshrub]

14. Communists are anarchists with a game plan.

Anarchists see the state an inherently anti-freedom. According to Communist ideology, the state is nothing more than the shadow that capitalists cast over society. Therefore, in order to dissolve the state, they take control of capital.

[Tsiyu]

9. Neal Boortz is one of those idiots who

is always claiming that we should take it in the you-know-what from corporations because "they create JOBS!" Okie Dokie. Whenever you hear him talk about "employers" vs "employees" you would swear that he was talking about slavemasters and their lowly slaves.

So what if the corporation doesn't pay workers a living wage and half those employees have to supplement their 50-hour-a-week paycheck with food stamps? So what if the jobs are eventually gonna be shipped overseas? So what if the corporation isn't paying its fair share of taxes in the community and actually COSTS the community money by polluting their air and water? So what if they offer no benefits, ecxept to the top 2% of executives?

WEll, guess what? Corporations don't have to do ANYTHING for anybody but themselves and thier stockholders, according to the trickle-downers. And yet, we should offer them tax breaks, protection from lawsuits, and never, ever, ever, ever tell any of them that they must pay their workers decent wages. They can be ALL GET- NO GIVE.

Isn't it funny that this is what they accuse welfare recipients of doing? But corporate welfare is killing us, and its absolute bullshit. Any corporation that cannot value its workers ( the ones who GEE.......ACTUALLY DO THE WORK FOR THE COMPANY!!!!!!) shouldn't get some free pass from government or any of us. A company like that not only shouldn't be swaddled and pampered by government, it should be banished from this nation as a poverty-inducing, bloodsucking Un-American enterprise.

The truth is, corporations now are the modern plantations. They got slavery back but they call it "trickle down yur leg" economics. Whores. Bloody, greedy, unAmerican whores, every one.

[Karenina]

11. Privatize the profit$

"socialize" the costs.

[Pystoff]

12. I wonder how much longer...

Before the US might see a mini or even major French Revolutionary movement take hold if this continues.

[Igel]

13. I'll take serious issue with the idea there is a free market for

CEOs, and that it's limited by the compensation committee.

Frequently may be made up of fellow insiders. But it need not be. And differences between the two are vanishingly small, in all but a small handful of examples each year.

Boards of directors (from personal experience) have two overriding concerns. They want the company to make money, no questions asked. And they want the income to occur tomorrow, or this afternoon, if possible. Short-term gain with no risk. New people tend to be risky. People with faulty skill sets are risky. So you avoid them. And that doesn't leave a large candidate pool. The highest recommendation a CEO candidate can have is a salary history with a steeply rising line and every increasing management portfolio.

The student board I was on didn't have money to play with, hated the idea of risk, and wanted money to start flowing in by that afternoon, at the latest. We settled: we got a rank newbie at $120k/yr (a decade ago!), when we were aiming at $80k; she had almost none of the skills we wanted. The bonus structure was also excessive. She only took the job because it was a stepping stone, and worth the risk: from clearly a medium-sized fish in a large lake, to the top fish in a small pond. Success with us would mean much larger success in a few years; failure, and she could blame us, and go back to being sr management.

She was the result of a second search, the first search crashed. The marginally qualified candidates in that search each wanted $1 million or more, those coming near our income cap were utter crap. And, to be honest, when we included the "PC" factor, the white male candidates demanding $1 million all seemed cheap. *They* also were risk adverse: they were likely to be short term, didn't control the economy, had no institutional retirement plan, and wanted to cover their asses for when they got replaced and were out of work for 6 months. Think "NFL linebacker" mentality.

Every year there are hundreds of new CEOs, and most of them are either moved up from slightly smaller companies, or hired from the stock of VPs in similar or larger companies, sometimes from within. When you get to the very large transational corporations, the candidate set tends to be rarefied, and the boards very, very risk adverse. Even wannabe CEOS are the sort that honestly believe no salary can ever reward them for their skills. And even smallish boards tend to believe that if you get the right person, they'll earn their salary--and vaguely want somebody who'll take responsibility, and allow the board to coast.

[Dora]

15. I wonder what response there will be

from the Iowa readers of this article. Surely this will inspire some LTTEs.

[yardwork]

16. Good sense in the heartland

[lonestarnot]

17. If anything needs to be changed in our capatilistic world

this would be it. There is not competition of salaries at the top. Top 1% controlled 55% of nations wealth last year. Probably close to 56 this year (just a guess on the 56%), but it keeps creeping up. Unbelievable that they receive these kinds of salaries and benefits while more and more American children are suffering "serious malnutrition." Hope that madcow steak goes down well there Michael Eisner... you Mickey Mouseketeer ...@#$%%#@@@% @#%@@%@#$# @#%%^@@

[ClintonTyree]

18. This sounds a lot like...

my rant in another thread on the front page today. It's always going to "trickle down" isn't it? NOT!
I think the average CEO compensation in Europe is about 20 times that of the average worker. In the U.S. it's up in the hundreds (400, something like that). Yeah, THAT'S fair! :eyes: For doing the same damned work.
This country has lost it's moral compass. Obscene wealth for very few and abject poverty for very many. There are people starving in our country. I say, EAT THE RICH! :mad:

[Ysolde]

19. Good article

even if it did have some inaccuracies (socialism doesn't require gov't to own everything). I really wish it had gone further down the discussion of socialism for multinationals, though. We've turned capitalism on its head in this country. Government money and laws now make sure that Corporations no longer have to risk anything, they just get the profits. The risk has been transferred down to the workers. Drives me crazy!!!

[sunnystarr]

20. Great article ... my favorite part

was the ending:

"It's about time for a thorough review of the whole rotten system with an eye toward restoring some balance."

[unblock]

21. there are several reasons why ceos make insanely outsized $$$$

the primary reason is because the system is set up so it's WORTH IT for companies to pay insane money for ceos.

this is simply because they vest insanely huge power in the ceo. he's basically a dictator, with (sometimes minimal) oversight from the board, of which he is likely a member and might even be chair.

with this insanely huge power, this ONE PERSON can swing profit wildly in either direction. a good/lucky ceo can swing billions of dollars toward the company, and a bad/unlucky ceo can lose a similar amount. so, paying a ceo, say, $100MM/yr seems insane, but when you figure that he might have made $10BB for the company, he's only getting a 1% "commission".

the problem, of course, is that these supposedly risk-averse companies are putting all their eggs in one basket when they grant a ceo that kind of power.

if they made key decisions by committee, and better segregated powers, then no one person would be able to ruin the company (nor would they be able to create massive windfall) and that's what risk aversion is all about.

yet, no one wants to hear about THAT kind of corporate structure in the u.s.


another reason for the major $$$$ is that ceos are HIGHLY specialized. this is not because management itself is specialized, but because ceos are dealmakers and in such circles, this requires contacts. so a company pays a ceo not for his dealmaking skills per se, but also for his rolodex. some other ceo candidate might have superior skills, but if the rolodex is in the wrong industry, then it's useless.

the problem here, of course, is that the culture is such that deals are made more on the basis of trusting the hired ceo, rather than on the merits of the deal itself. this is not to say that they don't do their due diligence and THINK that it's all about the merits of the deal. but the reality is that the illusion of being able to trust the ceo is key, even while you know that he's being paid to sell you a bill of goods.

but as long as the people in control of the corporate wealth make the rules in such manner, companies must high someone "inside" this wealth culture in order to compete.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

24. That would be OK with me if it was ACTUALLY a commssion.

Profited 10 billion? Earn a hundred million. Profited a million? Earn ten thousand dollars. Losses? You worked for free.

OK, plus some base salary of, say, $100,000 a year. Maybe.

[WillyT]

22. Ain't It The Truth...

Off with their heads!!!



:mad:

[bpilgrim]

23. lets' OUTSOURCE our CEOs

bet we could get a GREAT FUCKING DEAL in CHINA :evilgrin:

peace