It's time to fix the system!
By Thom Hartmann A...
Last year, median CEO pay jumped to $10.5 million dollars – an increase of about 13 percent. However, most workers didn't see their paychecks go up by a single dime. According to an analysis by USA Today, corporate executives scored huge pay bumps thanks to big gains in the stock market. But, earnings for average workers stayed pretty much stagnant – only increasing 1.4 percent in all of 2012. According to the myth of Reaganomics, when those at the top make tons of money, some of that wealth should trickle down to the rest of us. But, for more than three decades, we've seen how that could not be farther from the truth.
Last year, degenerate gamblers on Wall Street made 20 billionaires $81 billion dollars richer, but that did nothing to boost our real economy, or provide more financial security for the average American. Our economy is so rigged that the very banksters who crashed our economy – and the CEOs who pay workers poverty wages – continue to be rewarded, while hard-working Americans can't even keep up with the cost of living. If we don't change this system, the billionaires will keep raking in hoards of cash, and we can kiss the American Dream goodbye forever.
As it stands, the middle class is shrinking day by day, and the super-rich control the very lawmakers who should be working to protect us. We need to get money out of politics. We need to ensure that workers share in our nation's prosperity. We need to stop rewarding the very folks who've rigged the system. That's why we need progressive policies that will strengthen the middle class, stand up to the banksters, and rebuild the American Dream.
Comments
#2
Palin -- Is the odd procedural requirement you speak of the 60 votes for cloture? Or, is it that Harry Reid has to vote against it to keep the bill alive for the future?
#3
DAM -- No one need go to Mars, just go to Somalia.
#4
Kend -- How do you know they are moving the jobs out of the country because they can not make a profit? I (probably all of us) think they are moving jobs out of the country because they can make a bigger profit.
The people in Scottsdale agree with you, That is a joke. Scottsdale is like Tosh.O describes Orange county, CA. Orange county has a large diversty. They have the upper middle class and the very wealthy.
I agree with you that the marketplace should determine the CEO's salary. FDR and LBJ demonstrated how good the market place could be. Thatcher and Reagan demonstrated how horrible a free market is. I think the function of the government should to ensure the fairness of the market place. Supply side economics destroys the balance of supply and demand to enrich the 1%.
#5
Kend, Custer deserved what he got, that was the ONLY war the "natives" ever won against the U.S. Army. With Little Big Horn and three other massacres the United States offered to sign a treaty they no doubt thad no intention of keeping.
Corporations don't have to move to make a profit, they just know they could make more a profit if they can dispense with any codes of decency in another locale. Germany has tremendous regulation but little capital flight and a robust economy. The United States did as well (i.e., had a robust economy) before personal income taxes were cut and tariffs removed and regulations removed so you can peddle that hogwash somewhere else.
#6
The fact is Kend, they can make a profit here but they have no loyalty to their own country so they'll let our economy go to hell if we don't force them to do otherwise. It's the nature of a competitive society, there can be no ethics in business, ethics are an impediment to one's competitiveness so, in a competitive society, ethics have to be handed down by government in the form of laws and regulations.
#7
All good points. But it was really hot and I eat and drank too much today. I have nothing left tonight.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Images of Thom
From Cracking the Code:
"Thom Hartmann ought to be bronzed. His new book sets off from the same high plane as the last and offers explicit tools and how-to advice that will allow you to see, hear, and feel propaganda when it's directed at you and use the same techniques to refute it. His book would make a deaf-mute a better communicator. I want him on my reading table every day, and if you try one of his books, so will you."
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Never one to shy away from the truth, Thom Hartmann’s collected works are inspiring, wise, and compelling. His work lights the way to a better America."
From Unequal Protection, 2nd Edition:
"If you wonder why and when giant corporations got the power to reign supreme over us, here’s the story."
Well, I hope I'm not picking on Kend, just conversing. Most business people piss me off because they have lost the importance of the worker and the consumer and a sense of a circular economy. I hope I am teaching.
Kend seems to, at least, be strong in his beliefs and know and stand by what he believes, and he has the guts to stick it out on this forum where most of us disagree with him. I have to admire his spunk. I enjoy hearing his side. At least he doesn't bash/smash people like I get when I go on financial or business forums.