Monday, January 03, 2011

Get Angry!

What happens when ordinary people aren't organised? When you have a system designed to benefit the rich and powerful few above all else? There is a one-sided class-war being waged against working people.

Inequality is now greater in the United States than during days of the Robber Barons. Income inequality has been increasing in America yet many do not seem very perturbed by it.

According to federal statistics, 759,761 people in Illinois, about half of them in Chicago, lived in extreme poverty in 2009 ( before the full effects of the recession could be measured.)

What this means, for instance, is that a family of four living in extreme poverty has to get by on $11,025 a year or less. That’s roughly $918 each month. If that family of four could find a two-bedroom apartment in Illinois for the 2009 state-wide average rent of $893, that leaves them with about $25.75 each month to pay for their food, utilities, clothing, health care and whatever else they needed.

http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/3071716-423/illinois-rights-human-poverty-state.html

Nor has Canada seen much backlash against their income inequality statistics

An examination of the 100 plumpest pay packages handed to executives at publicly traded companies in Canada shows they pulled in an average $6.6 million each in 2009. That’s a far cry from the $42,988 the average Canadian makes and it dwarfs the $19,877 a minimum-wage worker would earn in a year. CEO pay has outpaced inflation by 53 per cent, while average earnings rose just four per cent more than inflation over the same 10 years.

The study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says Canada’s best-paid CEOs made 155 times more than the average Canadian. The biggest pay package went to Aaron Regent at Barrick Gold Corp., made $24.2 million in 2009, according to Mackenzie’s calculations. In second place was Hunter Harrison at Canadian National Railway Co., $17.3 million, followed by Gerald Schwartz at Onex Corp , at $16.7 million.

The true earnings of CEOs because of the conservative way corporations report the value of stock options in their executive compensation disclosures are underestimates. The big banks, for example, are under-reporting the value of 2009 stock options by about $5.1 million per CEO.

http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Canada%20-%20World/1969-12-31/article-2085833/CEOs-made-155-times-more-than-the-average-Canadian-despite-recession-study/1

In the face of this inequality and injustice, SOYMB would rather not be glued to a “be happy” mantra. Sometimes anger is the more appropriate response. As long as the working class are disorganised and pointing fingers at one another, the rich, with their teams of lobbyists, will always hold the reins to government.

2 comments:

ajohnstone said...

Between the late 1980s and the mid-2000s, the incomes of the richest 20 percent of Massachusetts families grew 44 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. Those of the poorest 20 percent grew less than 2 percent. Incomes rose most rapidly for families in the highest economic brackets, with the average inflation-adjusted income for those in the top 5 percent nearly doubling from $163,783 in the late 1980s to $310,440 in the mid-2000s.

Rozell said his customers don’t seem to be jealous of the wealthy. Most believe what they hear from their employers about the reason layoffs and pay cuts are needed.
Pt1 http://www.wbjournal.com/news47991.htm
Pt2 http://www.wbjournal.com/news48098.html

ajohnstone said...

Expressed in a different way, by 2:30 p.m. Monday, the first working day of the year, those CEOs will have earned the full year's wage of the average Canadian. CEOs are sitting on $1.3 billion of stock options they haven't yet cashed in. That's about $2 in future income for every $1 they declared in 2009."

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/rich+richer/4055261/story.html