A brief follow to my post of last week about how well the recovery is going for investors and corporate profits and now, by way of linkage to this piece from the Saturday NewYork Times, for CEO’s. A taste:
“After shrinking during the 2008-9 recession, paychecks for top American executives are growing again — in many cases, significantly so.
“Rarely has the view from the corner office seemed so at odds with the view from the street corner. At a time when millions of Americans are trying to hang on to homes and millions more are trying to hang on to jobs, the chief executives of major corporations like 3M, General Electric and Cisco Systems are making as much today as they were before the recession hit. Indeed, some are making even more.
“The disparity is especially stark as companies are swimming in cash. In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.
“So far… what many of these executives aren’t doing, however, is hiring. Unemployment, although down from its peak, stood at 8.8 percent in March. And few economists predict the jobless rate will drop substantially anytime soon.
“For the average C.E.O., however, the good times have returned. The median pay for top executives at 200 major companies was $9.6 million last year. That was a 12 percent increase over 2009, according to a study conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, a compensation consulting firm based in Redwood City, Calif.”
Those individual income tax rates from the Eisenhower era, adjusted for inflation, and up to 90 percent, look better to me all the time. If greedy CEOs leave the country, taking up residence elsewhere to avoid paying the taxes, it’s merely prima facie evidence that they have no interest in the well-being of the society that makes their fortune possible, merely their own. Write the new tax law so that there are significant and unavoidable consequences for such behavior.
Yup, give tax breaks so the job creators can keep more of their own money and create new jobs through investment. This has never been the case and the public needs to know they’ve been duped. When the rich pay taxes and the money is redistributed to middle and low income workers through lower education costs, retirement programs like social security, efficient health care like medicare and business aiding infrastructure improvement the effect on the economy is immediate. Money is spent, the economy is stimulated, the rich benefit from that robust economic activity and many, many, people are better off for it. Win, Win, Win, Win.
I just take a little issue with the notion that the upward distribution of wealth is a “trickle”. In fact is more of a flood. 90% all the increased revenue over the last three decades has gone to the top 10% of the wealthiest Americans. They’ve seen 400%-500% increases in their incomes while most Americans have seen flat incomes, and more recently decreased incomes. That’s no trickle.