Sunday, April 08, 2007

Executive Pay Frenzy at the New York Times

As readers here know, Sunday in America is Class Anxiety Day. The New York Times prepared a special Easter Class Anxiety edition with excellent graphics available on line for a week or so. The anxiety almost spills over into anger and even a little whiff of class war. It is pretty outrageous, what you can do by studying 200 "large public companies" and the pay of the top three folks. Look at the graph to the left. I don't think I have the heart to write about this long enough to get to the bottom of this insane, stratospheric spike they've given themselves - oops, I made it. The big spike is actually the top 10% of executives, showing the nutty spikes within spikes of the inequality that has become our defining national feature. My gut reaction is that these guys at the top don't care about anything - the country, the economy, the people, the environment, nothing outside of crushing everybody else in whatever game they think they're playing. Maybe they'd pay attention if somebody tried to raise the 15% capital gains tax rate back to the 38% or whatever the hell the top bracket is in this country of clueless leaders. But global warming, civil wars, blown up in the market, starvation and drinking water for a billion people that makes you crap your guts out: these guys can't do a goddam thing except make it worse, so you wonder why we're paying them anything. It almost makes you wish the Second Coming would come right now. Happy Easter everyone. I need another chocolate bunny.

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