Value of an Individual – Worth of a Soldier
I was listening to my weekend financial programs on FOX Business News. These are part of my weekly habits necessary for my job. I have long proposed that no CEO is worth more than $1 million a year. I am a CEO and have made pretty good money. The commentators, all proponents of Cowboy Capitalism, whose only measure of value is wealth, have long supported eliminating all regulation on companies with the usual, oh if people do not want to work there they can go elsewhere, etc. A comment caught my attention.“Let’s face it, the CEO is not the same as the person stocking the shelves at WALMART or TARGET. He is worth $100 million a year while the employee should be happy that the company is giving him $15k year because, frankly, he is not worth it.”
They then proceeded to talk about how the US needed to bomb IRAN, send more soldiers into IRAQ, and generally move more soldiers into harms way to protect their investments around the world.
When a soldier is killed his family gets $100k. A CEO is worth $100 million a year. The soldier in the best case exposes himself to physical danger and his family to financial disaster and in the worst case is maimed or DEAD. What is he doing, protecting the international interested not of America, instead of Corporate America. He gives his life to protect the same people who value his entire life and the life of his family less than 1 day of a CEO.
I think we need to look at this differently. I value the life of a soldier more than I value the life of any CEO. Therefore we should increase the death or serious injury policy on every soldier to $10 million and triple the annual salary for all military personnel. This should be paid for with a 99% tax on all earnings over $1 million.
We talk about values here in the US. We talk about protecting life, we talk about individual’s rights. Perhaps it is time that we actually do something about it. I have earned over $1 million a year. I currently do not. It is very difficult to spend intelligently over $1 million a year. Let’s actually do something, not just lip service, to show that we do value life over other things. Lets pay for the life of a soldier just like we pay for a day in the life of a CEO.We have allowed Corporate America to buddy into our political system. With tax deductible donations, Corporate America has bought control of the US political system. A legal entity is more important than flesh and blood. I am sorry, I just do not agree. The life of any soldier is worth more than the life of any CEO, including my own. I just make money. He/She protects my kids.
Tags: Politics Corporate America Walmart Minimum Wage War on the Middle Class CEO Compensation Military Iraq
Labels: CEO Pay, Class Warfare, Corporations, Corruption, Military, War
posted by Small Business USA at 9:13 AM
6 Comments:
It is very telling how the megacorps look at the world and those of us at the bottom of the food chain. Very interesting post.
Found thru Technorati that you linked to my page and am in the process of updating my template. A link will be added to my 'blogs linked here' blogroll...
Very nice page, by the way... I will try to stop by and check it out in the near future. We are living thru a very interesting turn of events which promises to keep all our attention on the politico's in D.C.
Regards
- fc ( fatcat politics )
fc Thank you. I have actually followed your site since I began blogging last year, on Travel Italy. There are so many political blogs out there and you guys do a great job of taking on the topics. I started this one to support all those trying to keep the politicians on topic with what is really important and not their usual self-interest.
David, I daily follow the exploits of these corporate cowboys. It's as fascinating as it is obscene. Fascinating in that shareholders feel compelled to pay these guys so much money, obscene that they can demand and get paid so much.
In Australia we suffer from an inferiority complex so we import Americans to CEO positions in our corporations. It's not that we don't have a supply of talent in Australia, Ford U.S.A had an Australian CEO,Jac Nasser who did a wonderful job for them.
What's so special about sacking half the workforce of a company to cut costs? This is the defined strategy of CEO's. Cut cost by $50 million (sacking workers), pocket $100 million in a CEO package.
Move on to the next job.
Today we have the cowboy from America Sol Trujillo, heading Australia's biggest corporation, Telstra. He commissioned a $30 million business analysis from his buddies on what was wrong with Telstra. Not a bad start.
Lexcen What you are seeing is the desire to create gain from nothing (smoke and mirrors). Primarily it works like this:
A company has equity value. Shareholders want to steal that equity so the pay the CEO to make decisions that will remove the equity from the company (no matter what this does to the company long term). They do this by taking out loans, making acquisitions firing employees, reducing wages, etc. The company then pays dividends or the stock price goes up. The Shareholders then sell the stock to others left holding the bag. The bag holders are usually smaller investors or retail investors. The bag holders see the appreciation and the increased profitability but do not realize that the company has mortgaged its future. A company can keep doing this until it has completed depleted equity. This is why new companies usually fail after 1 round of "cost cutting measures" while established companies require more time.
The auto industry is the perfect example. They blame employee contracts for their woes when it is because they make ugly cars. They will continue to reorganize, cut costs etc. but they will bankrupt unless they take on the real problem, making better cooler products. In the meantime their stock fluctuates according to how many people they fire. The more they fire the worse it gets and the closer they come to bankruptcy.
This is the result of Investors interests in contrast with good business. Since stocks are liquid the investors have no reason to want the company to make good decisions. They pay big bucks to convince executive management to make poor business decisions favoring the investors short term goals.
David, we have a history of this type of practice in Australia, many years ago the tax office uncovered what became known as the 'bottom of the harbour' scheme. See link, http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/lcj/wayward/ch9t.html
It's appalling to realize that big corporations are following this trend.
Lexcen Citibank and JP Morgan will not be happy knowing that we think about them as fraudsters but then again I don't think they care. They are making huge megabucks on the transactions.
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