WP: Special Report on “Breakaway Wealth”

There is a huge Washington Post special report on Breakaway Wealth in the US. More than most other industrialized nations, the US has seen the top 0.1% compensated in vastly disproportionate numbers versus the rest of the populace.

There are at least several reasons to be concerned about this, beyond basic fairness: 1) Nations that have extremes wealth disparities tend towards social unrest. Usually, its banana republics and dictatorships, but it could happen in a corporate-owned quasi democracy as well. 2) CEOs and other company insiders have been engaging in a massive grab of shareholders wealth for decades. Its gotten appreciably worse in the 2000s. 3) Management is now trying to hide their compensation from the business owners — the firm’s shareholders

Making matters even more outrageous, these CEOs are trying to pass legislation that would legally allow them to not to disclose executive compensation at public companies:

“Here’s one financial figure some big U.S. companies would rather keep secret: how much more their chief executive makes than the typical worker. Now a group backed by 81 major companies — including McDonald’s, Lowe’s, General Dynamics, American Airlines, IBM and General Mills — is lobbying against new rules that would force disclosure of that comparison.

The lobbying effort began more than a year ago. It involved some of the biggest names in corporate America and meetings with members of both parties on the House Financial Services Committee and Senate banking committee. The companies and their Republican allies in Congress call comparisons between the chief and everyone else in the company “useless.”

But some Democrats and investors say the information should be issued to highlight the growing income disparity in the United States. They add that opponents of disclosure merely want to hide the outrageous scale of executive pay packages.”

Legalized theft of shareholder assets, approved by a corrupt Congress. What little respect I had left for the GOP is now completely gone. This is not “business friendly” — its utterly corrupt theft of shareholders.

The charts below (click for larger graphics) show exactly how absurd this has become. The rumors you may have heard about class warfare have been greatly exaggerated . . .

>

US Compared with other countries

Who makes up the top 0.1%?

Rising executive pay

Growing share of income for the rich

Charts via Washington Post

>

Sources:
Special Report: Breakaway Wealth
An ongoing Washington Post series about how the rich are pulling away from the rest of America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/breakawaywealth

Business group: Public companies shouldn’t have to compare CEO and worker pay
Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post, June 24 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/business-group-public-companies-shouldnt-have-to-compare-ceo-and-worker-pay/2011/06/23/AGGMcFjH_story.html