hvactec
VIP Member
While police have cleared many Occupy encampments, a collective cry, loud and clear, has gone up from countless voices across the country: Enough's enough.
If youre part of the one percent, even getting fired comes
with a cushion made of eiderdown. GMI, a research company that gets paid to
keep an eye on such things, just issued a study headlined, Twenty-One U.S. CEOs with Golden Parachutes of More than $100 Million. Thats each.
The reports authors, Paul Hodgson and Greg Ruel, write, These 21 CEOs walked away with almost $4 billion in combined compensation. In total, $1.7 billion in equity profits was realized by these CEOs, primarily
on the exercise of time-vesting stock options and restricted stock.
This news came the same day as another report, this one from Indiana University, titled, At Risk: Americas Poor during and after the Great Recession. Its researchers conclude, The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery. The proportion of people living in poverty has increased by 27% between the year before the onset of the Great Recession (2006) and 2010 Poverty is expected to increase again in 2011 due to the slow pace of the economic recovery, the persistently high rate of unemployment, and the long duration of spells of unemployment.
In fact, the white paper finds that we now have the largest number of long-term unemployed people in the United States since records were first kept in 1948 four million report theyve been unemployed for more than a year. Not necessarily counting the former CEOs gently floating to earth from those golden parachutes.
So no, Mitt Romney, when we say that Americans are waking up to the reality that inequality matters, were not guilty of envy or class warfare, as you claimed to Matt Lauer on NBCs Today. Nor are we talking about everybody earning the same amount of money thats the straw man apologists for inequality raise whenever anyone tries to get serious.
Were talking what it takes to live a decent life. If you get sick without health coverage, inequality matters. If youre the only breadwinner and out of work, inequality matters. If your local public library closes down and you cant afford books on your own, inequality matters. If budget cuts mean your child has to pay to play on the school basketball team, sing in the chorus or march in the band, inequality matters. If you lose your job as youre about to retire, inequality matters. If the financial system collapses and knocks the props from beneath your pension, inequality matters.
Neither one of us grew up wealthy, but we went to good public schools, played sandlot ball at a good public park, lived near a good public library, and drove down good public highways all made possible by people we never met and would never know. There was an unwritten bargain among generations: we didnt all get the same deal, but we did get civilization
Now the bargains being shredded. The people we met from Occupy Wall Street get ityou could tell from their slogans. One of the younger protesters wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words: The systems not broken. Its fixed. Thats right rigged. And thats why so many are so angry. Not at wealth itself. But at the powerful players who win by fixing the game instead of by honest competition; at the crony capitalists who resort to tricks, loopholes, and cold cash to make sure insiders prosper and then pull up the ladder behind them.
read more America Has Woken Up to the Reality: Inequality Matters | Take Action | AlterNet
If youre part of the one percent, even getting fired comes
with a cushion made of eiderdown. GMI, a research company that gets paid to
keep an eye on such things, just issued a study headlined, Twenty-One U.S. CEOs with Golden Parachutes of More than $100 Million. Thats each.
The reports authors, Paul Hodgson and Greg Ruel, write, These 21 CEOs walked away with almost $4 billion in combined compensation. In total, $1.7 billion in equity profits was realized by these CEOs, primarily
on the exercise of time-vesting stock options and restricted stock.
This news came the same day as another report, this one from Indiana University, titled, At Risk: Americas Poor during and after the Great Recession. Its researchers conclude, The number of people living in poverty is increasing and is expected to increase further, despite the recovery. The proportion of people living in poverty has increased by 27% between the year before the onset of the Great Recession (2006) and 2010 Poverty is expected to increase again in 2011 due to the slow pace of the economic recovery, the persistently high rate of unemployment, and the long duration of spells of unemployment.
In fact, the white paper finds that we now have the largest number of long-term unemployed people in the United States since records were first kept in 1948 four million report theyve been unemployed for more than a year. Not necessarily counting the former CEOs gently floating to earth from those golden parachutes.
So no, Mitt Romney, when we say that Americans are waking up to the reality that inequality matters, were not guilty of envy or class warfare, as you claimed to Matt Lauer on NBCs Today. Nor are we talking about everybody earning the same amount of money thats the straw man apologists for inequality raise whenever anyone tries to get serious.
Were talking what it takes to live a decent life. If you get sick without health coverage, inequality matters. If youre the only breadwinner and out of work, inequality matters. If your local public library closes down and you cant afford books on your own, inequality matters. If budget cuts mean your child has to pay to play on the school basketball team, sing in the chorus or march in the band, inequality matters. If you lose your job as youre about to retire, inequality matters. If the financial system collapses and knocks the props from beneath your pension, inequality matters.
Neither one of us grew up wealthy, but we went to good public schools, played sandlot ball at a good public park, lived near a good public library, and drove down good public highways all made possible by people we never met and would never know. There was an unwritten bargain among generations: we didnt all get the same deal, but we did get civilization
Now the bargains being shredded. The people we met from Occupy Wall Street get ityou could tell from their slogans. One of the younger protesters wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the words: The systems not broken. Its fixed. Thats right rigged. And thats why so many are so angry. Not at wealth itself. But at the powerful players who win by fixing the game instead of by honest competition; at the crony capitalists who resort to tricks, loopholes, and cold cash to make sure insiders prosper and then pull up the ladder behind them.
read more America Has Woken Up to the Reality: Inequality Matters | Take Action | AlterNet