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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Arthur Radley who wrote (260964)	6/4/2002 9:31:45 AM
From: greenspirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Solutions Texas. What is your solution? Do you believe we should make it illegal for an organization to move offshore? Do you believe the government should regulate the pay of executives? Or would you rather see a complete change in the way we collect taxes, such as an across the board sales tax?

To: Arthur Radley who wrote (260964)	6/4/2002 9:56:03 PM
From: Just_Observing	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

TexasDude, though your Back Alley of Shame effort is admirable, you are up against a system which has largely hijacked economic and political power in America. Here are the facts: At the same time that stock prices are falling, CEO pay continues to rise. According to the New York Times, the average CEO of a major corporation received a record-breaking $20 million in 2000, including nearly 50 percent more stock options and 22 percent more in salary and bonus. By way of comparison, the Standard & Poor 500 Index fell 10 percent in 2000 and the NASDAQ Composite Index fell 39 percent. The typical hourly worker received a 3 percent raise last year, and salaried employees got about 4 percent more during the same time. Inequality between the shop floor and the executive suite is at an all-time high. According to Business Week, the average CEO made 42 times the average blue-collar worker’s pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990 and a staggering 531 times in 2000. Academic studies, including those published by the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, have shown this inequality hurts employee morale and productivity and boosts turnover. Hardly any CEO cannot be replaced by equally competent personnel at 20 to 40 times the average blue-collar worker's salary. While workers are being laid-off at record rates (8+ million are unemployed now), has a single CEO been replaced with a lower paid CEO to save about 500 jobs? And if CEOs are making 531 times the average worker's pay, how much are the other officers making? The current incestuous and corrupt corporate governance systems are concentrating economic power in fewer and fewer hands. Given the role of money in American elections, political power is also being concentrated. And laws are being passed to favor the current economic system. This vicious cycle of ever concentrating economic and political power in just a few hands, along with the worst schools in the developed world (not a coincidence, IMO) are strangling our democracy. The unfortunate events of 9/11 and hastily passed legislation are just accelerating this process in the name of patriotism. Besides, shame does not work anymore as a motivational factor in America. Once you are in the rarefied atmosphere where you are making 100 times what the average stiff makes, you only have have contempt for the under-achieving general population. Besides, if you need a good image (to garner even more money), you can easily buy the image you want. They say money is the root of all evil. Unprecedented money brings unprecedented evil. And you can safely bet a CEO's compensation against an average worker's pay on that. The last time we had such concentration of power on America, we got the Great Depression. And it took us a major war to get us moving forward again. Now with an axis of evil, $100 billion a year more for the military, and 6.2 billion people heating up the planet as fast as 130 million cars in the US, we are poised for a rather larger cataclysmic adjustment. In Gandhi's opinion, wars were thus rooted in the overweening greed of men as also in the purblind tribalism that placed nationalism above humanity aflcio.org hinduonnet.com