Working Life

We hear an enduring myth: the "free market" decides who gets what in an efficient dance of allocation of resources through competition. Garbage. Especially when it comes to CEO pay–though apparently there are some who want to continue the myth of competition.   Over the weekend, I caught this in the NYTimes business section–an excerpt […]

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   I know we are shocked by this (via The Wall Street Journal–subscription): Overall, median total direct compensation for CEOs in the sample rose 3.0% during their latest fiscal year, as total shareholder return came in at 29%. Total direct compensation includes salary, bonuses and the awarded value of stock, options and other long-term incentives. […]

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   I’ve written extensively about greed and CEO pay, particularly in "The Audacity of Greed". So, I like to see the non-traditional press pick it up and stick with it. Here’s a piece by Michael Hiltzik in The Los Angeles Times, which is a follow up piece by him on Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum: […]

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The raid on our country’s treasury has been underway for 30 years (and more). The corporate leaders have successfully drained our common wealth, shifting money away from the community and, instead, diverting it into the hands of a few. And now the din is growing for another robbery of the people to the tune of […]

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The secret money flowing into organizations trying to buy the November election for the Republican Party is motivated by a simple idea: greed. Sure, there is some rhetoric about "smaller government" and ranting about the evils of national health care. But, at the end of the day, it’s about extremely rich people never having enough. […]

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I mean, c’mon–is there no shame? Yes, that’s rhetorical. We have the greatest jobs crisis in decades, with close to one in five Americans not able to find decent, full-time paying work. The minimum wage is a poverty-level wage. But, all is well on Wall Street–as in $144 BILLION in pay.   This just up […]

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Count me in the group, perhaps small, that is unimpressed with the pledge by a group of billionaires to give away large parts of their fortune. Not because I oppose the idea of philanthropy. Rather, the announcement obscures a reality: very little of the money will go to challenging the root causes of the incredible […]

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