I've finally figured out what the hell is wrong with this country. I have to admit, I don't know how to fix it, but that's why I'm not running for office. I am certain that there are some brilliant political minds out there that do. But the problem is this-- pure, unadulterated, unabashed GREED. Yep. That's the problem. The Mitt Romney's of the world don't have enough money and they want more, more, more until they have it all, I suppose.
In the United States, CEO's of the top 500 companies make an average of 475 times more than the average worker. Take a minute and let that sink in. The suit that sits behind the desk and never gets his hands dirty makes an average of $475 for every buck you make. You--the person who actually creates a product or performs a service so that CEO can sit behind that desk and push his gold-plated pencil. It seems to me that the average CEO has lost touch with the symbiotic relationship the executives of a corporation have with the workers of the same.
Let's look at an example. Mike Duke, CEO of your favorite corporation and mine--Wally World (also known as Wal-Mart). Mikey sits behind his mahogany desk all day and makes $35 million a year. The average Wally World worker bee is hired at around $8.75 an hour. First, take note that the worker bee, toiling at her labor doesn't even break out of poverty. She's still qualified for food stamps and in most cases, Medicaid. You see--it would cut into Mikey's profit margin to offer his worker bee's a decent health plan. The health insurance offered by Wal-Mart is pure rubbish (I know- I used to be a Wal-Mart worker bee). If you opt into that health care plan, you might as well pay Wal-Mart for the privilege of working there.
To put Mikey's salary into perspective, he makes more on his lunch hour than his worker bees make in a year. Well he runs one of the largest corporations in the world, you say. He deserves to be well paid. Not so fast. In Britain, the average ratio of chief executive to average worker salary is 22 to 1; in Japan, 11 to 1, in Canada and Italy, 20 to 1, in South Africa (South Africa, for Pete's sake) 21 to 1. In fact, of all the nations investigated, the highest ratio is found in good old Venezuela, where the average CEO makes $50 bucks for every buck their workers make. So, here ya go--American exceptionalism at work--woo-hoo!! We're number one!!
So, back to Wal-Mart. In fairness, for the most part, Wal-Mart starts it's worker bees at above the federal minimum wage. Which is more than we can say for a lot of corporations. Never the less, it isn't enough to raise a family out of poverty. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. The federal poverty threshold for a family of 4 is $23,050 per year. That works out to about $11.10 per hour. So our Wal-Mart standard is about $2 off the mark to pull a person out of poverty. And that's before taxes, FICA and Medicare taxes (not to mention state taxes to boot). So you're getting the picture--it ain't easy.
So remember this the next time you hear Mitt Romney spouting off about how poor people are the problem. When he starts ranting about the 47% who are looking for a handout. Fuck him. The problem are the Mike Dukes of the world who make more in a god-damned hour than his workers do in an entire fucking year. The problem is greed. And there's a fix for that. They're called unions who stand up for workers rights. It's refusing to vote against your own interest. It's demanding that the United States come into line with the rest of the blessed planet in terms of wage disparity. It's time to take our futures into our own hands. Not only are we the 99%, we're the 47% too. And we're not asking for a handout--we're asking for a fair shake. Oh, look--I was wrong. I do know how to fix it after all. It all starts with casting a single ballot against the idiot that thinks you're the problem and you're not good enough.
The unions are a good start. Pure unadulterated greed is going to be the downfall of these CEO's. And personally I hope to see, in my lifetime, these people start taking from one another.
ReplyDeleteBut also that they see that if they want their corporations to make money they have to pay us (the workers), I say as a former WalMart employee, money so we can spend it in their stores. For if we 47% of the 99% don't have money to pay taxes, which we do, then we do not have the money to buy their products.
You've seen it in your lifetime, dear reader. What do you think Bain Vulture Capital did? Simply put, Mittens robbed the nests of other CEO's and their companies. Sometimes those CEO's got to keep their jobs, but sometimes, they found themselves in the unemployment line as well. Not the regular unemployment line like their workers...the special golden parachute unemployment line where they took trips to the Caymens to visit their bank accounts waiting for the next big company to come along.
ReplyDeleteWhat the uber-rich don't seem to quite grasp is that the working class and middle class drive the American economy. The less money we make, the more we learn to do without. And if we're doing without it--we're not buying it. Fox News recently lamented that over 99% of poor people have refrigerators. Which I would think is pretty damn good news for fridge manufacturers. Because, unlike houses, how many fridges does one stinking fucking rich bitch need in their mansions? When we get down so low we can't afford a fridge, we're ALL in pretty deep shit.