CEOs get rich sending U.S. jobs overseas, looting productive wealth it it took Americans a century to create

Reasons for outrageous CEO pay packages well known, Jon Talton
seattletimes.nwsource.com

...The median American household lost 40 percent of its wealth from 2007 to 2010, and this probably understates the financial ruin experienced by many. Wages for most Americans have been virtually flat for 30 years. Yet from 2009 to 2010 alone, the top 1 percent's wealth grew by more than 11.6 percent.

So much for the Occupy movement...

It's pointless to thunder because the causes of such high compensation are well known. Among them: Steadily lower tax rates on the wealthy, lapdog boards of directors, perverse incentives, the unintended consequences of supposed reforms such as stock options, the power of institutional investors seeking short-term gains and the myth of the chief executive as super hero.

The country has changed since the mid-20th century, when chief executives made much less, not least in our morals, norms and sense of mutual obligation. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous statement about "defining deviancy down" applies to many a boardroom, not just to street corners.

In that America, rising productivity was widely shared. The bosses and the people who made their money from investments did very well, but so did ordinary workers. That is no longer the case.

By the time shareholder advocacy and initiatives such as say on pay and more independent boards gained traction, the well-paid horse was long gone from the barn. Today's compensation and its increases are routine.

It's equally pointless to thunder because the consequences have been repeatedly reviewed. In too many cases, incentives for chief executives don't align with preserving the long-term health of their companies, much less with sharing the fruits of productivity and innovation with workers and stakeholders, including communities.

These moguls are paid more if they send good jobs offshore, cut employment at home, hold down wages and slash benefits, close operations or even sell the company. At their worst, compensation practices sack the corporate treasury even as average workers are being let go.

At their worst, they are part of a financialized economy engaged in looting the productive wealth it has taken Americans a century to create. The CEOs who were among the biggest demolition artists behind the Great Recession were getting rich from speculating in risky derivatives, adding debt and moving money around...

So we may as well admit it. We have a permanent plutocracy, something not seen since the late 19th century.

It may do good deeds, as with Bill Gates. But this is not a generation, as with its robber baron forebears such as Andrew Carnegie, that is afraid of going to hell...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

Excellent article about the decline in the ethics, morality and patriotism of the American "elite" over the last three decades (and longer), and how that has led to the looting of the country and of average Americans by a parasitic, plutocratic neo-Ruling Class (which self-evidently is fronted by corrupt Beltway politicians like Obama and Bush).

"This is not a generation [of CEOs]...that is afraid of going to hell," says Talton.

And why not, I wonder? Because they are either Jews, faux-"Christian" Judeo-Christian Zionists, or atheist meterialist money-worshippers, just the flip side of atheist-materialist communists.

For free enterprise to operate in some sort of functional manner, it has to be grounded within a system of morals, ethics, patriotism, and good will. The elites of the Worst Generatin have none of these, or to the extent they have them, they are superficial, shallow and mere posing and flag-waving.

Any truly principled morals, ethics, patriotism, and good will, for this low-cunning ilk, goes straight out the window the second it becomes inconvenient to their money-grubbing.

Such creatures bring nothing positive whatsover to a country, a civilization, or the plight of the world. They amount to destructive sociopaths and mere parasites on productive, positive civilization, whose complete abscensce would be a huge net benefit to America and Western civilization.

"Leaders" like Bush and Obama are the front men for this sickening, Zionist-Globalist amalgamation, and the only possible signficance of any "policy changes" that Obama, for example, will make, is that they are mere table scraps being thrown by the left half of the ruling class to some of the people they are plundering as a temporary measure to stave off the radical reform and house-cleaning necessary to scour the entrenched corruption out of the Beltway, just as Obama himself is merely such a superficial tool of these parasites and predators, quickly promoted and thrust to the fore of the Democratic Party to paper over the increasingly obvious oligarchical theft and plunder that has now even accelerated on his "watch."