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144
sarge33rd
ID: 12554167 Mon, Nov 19, 2012, 15:13
Record corporate profits, and rather than invest part of those profits in employee wellness, they terminate people. THAT, is why I so despise corporate America.
I am not sure how to take that, but the point I was trying to make is that CEO is not rocket science, yes there are special cases of CEO's that deserve the big money just like some professional athletes, but the problem is most of CEO's are more like minor league players whose skills are not much different from any other minor league player. If that all makes sense?
Cant say I disagree with anything from 142 onward. The problem is, even companies that realize CEO's are replaceable are all taking from the same pool of candidates. They're all the same after the same goals. Replacing one with a carbon copy of himself.
Yet in the 1950s incomes in the top bracket faced a marginal tax rate of 91, that’s right, 91 percent, while taxes on corporate profits were twice as large, relative to national income, as in recent years. The best estimates suggest that circa 1960 the top 0.01 percent of Americans paid an effective federal tax rate of more than 70 percent, twice what they pay today.
Nor were high taxes the only burden wealthy businessmen had to bear. They also faced a labor force with a degree of bargaining power hard to imagine today. In 1955 roughly a third of American workers were union members. In the biggest companies, management and labor bargained as equals, so much so that it was common to talk about corporations serving an array of “stakeholders” as opposed to merely serving stockholders.
Squeezed between high taxes and empowered workers, executives were relatively impoverished by the standards of either earlier or later generations. In 1955 Fortune magazine published an essay, “How top executives live,” which emphasized how modest their lifestyles had become compared with days of yore. The vast mansions, armies of servants, and huge yachts of the 1920s were no more; by 1955 the typical executive, Fortune claimed, lived in a smallish suburban house, relied on part-time help and skippered his own relatively small boat
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Strange to say, however, the oppressed executives Fortune portrayed in 1955 didn’t go Galt and deprive the nation of their talents. On the contrary, if Fortune is to be believed, they were working harder than ever. And the high-tax, strong-union decades after World War II were in fact marked by spectacular, widely shared economic growth: nothing before or since has matched the doubling of median family income between 1947 and 1973.
another blog opinion piece B? We KNOW, your sources are going to bash unions, Democrats, and anything left of AC. Thats a given. Try something new, like linking to a NEWS source, for news.
Hostess Brands Inc. said Tuesday night it would proceed with liquidation plans after mediation fails.
"I'm not too optimistic about this mediation," Frank Hurt, president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, said when reached earlier Tuesday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio. He said he couldn't get to New York, where the session was taking place; instead, he said, the union's secretary-treasurer was attending.
Hostess Brands Inc. said Tuesday night it would proceed with liquidation plans after mediation fails.
Earlier Tuesday, the head of the bakers union whose strike precipitated Hostess liquidation plans didn't attend a last-ditch mediation session and wasn't hopeful about its prospects, he said.
"I'm not too optimistic about this mediation," Frank Hurt, president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, said when reached earlier Tuesday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio. He said he couldn't get to New York, where the session was taking place; instead, he said, the union's secretary-treasurer was attending.
The mediation came at a judge's suggestion after the Twinkie maker said Friday that a week-long strike by the bakers left the company no choice but to seek a bankruptcy judge's approval for liquidation.
The judge, Robert Drain, urged mediation...
The judge indicated Monday that if mediation wasn't successful, Hostess could return to court Wednesday to pursue its liquidation plan.
Got that? Mediation ordered Monday. Mediation [without Frank Hurt] Tuesday. Liquidation plan finalized Wednesday.
And Frank Hurt takes the power he thinks he won, the credible threat he brings to the next company he tries to strongarm.
As we said, if only people had a basic understanding of how bankruptcy truly worked, and what the real state of the economy was, then Hostess' workers may have had a chance and some amicable comrpomise would have been possible.
Then again, if people in America actually understood economics and simple finance, then the "Ohio outcome", and many others, would have likely been quite different.
No, they were not. It is an opinion piece, an editorial, with some WSJ quotes contained within. The piece itself, is a hack job.
The astonishing turnabout in the evaluation of Obama’s campaign, from delusional nincompoops to the most terrifyingly efficient campaign apparatus in history, helps Podhoretz reach his desired conclusion, that Obama’s victory owed nothing at all to his policy platform.
Pennsylvania's Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) is slashing the hours of 400 adjunct instructors, support staff, and part-time instructors to dodge paying for Obamacare.
Most interesting are the quotes 'from our betters'. You know, those enlightened minds society needs to run things, where the rest of us are not so capable of making our own decisions. The kind of minds we will need making health decisions for us. The kinds of minds we need coming up with the next five year plan. The kind of visionary minds that will look ahead and help us avoid the pitfalls ahead we might have fallen into without their paternalistic authoritive visionary guidance. Tell us the 'smart growth' plan oh mighty visionaries...
"It's kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don't have the money to pay for it," said adjunct biology professor Adam Davis.
No, really? This never occurred to you before? You couldn't see this coming? I saw it four years ago. Only the majority of Americans saw it coming and opposed it.
Union representatives provide clever input.
The solution, says United Steelworkers representative Jeff Cech, is that adjunct professors should unionize in an attempt to thwart schools seeking similar cost-savings efforts from avoiding Obamacare.
"They may be complying with the letter of the law, but the letter of law and the spirit of the law are two different things," said Mr. Cech. "If they are doing it at CCAC, it can't be long before they do it other places."
There you have the solution. Make it illegal to structure your business to maximize profits. Comply with the spirit of the law, oh greedy capitalists. Bestow nirvana upon us, whether you can afford to do so or not. Ours is not the burden of coming up with the money. That's your job.
It can't be long before it happens elsewhere? Really quick on the uptake.
Rather than throw them to the wolves (which is what the GOP would have happen) all those employees are eligible for credits toward getting their own insurance.
Here in the United States, we've always had laws to prevent companies from "maximizing profits." Surprised it took the rapid Right this long to notice.
all those employees are eligible for credits toward getting their own insurance.
Good thing they are getting credits. Because with less hours and less pay there is less money to buy a product the government is telling us we must purchase.
#168: Sure, but we're better off as a country when more people have insurance. They live longer and healthier, meaning that they work more and contribute more in taxes.
Plus, of course, the "side benefit" of people living longer, and healthier. Hard to get more pro-life than that.
170 - that has yet to be seen if we're better off as a country. In my eyes, we're worse off as a country with less individual freedom and more government intrusion because of the way the healthcare plan was enacted.
Anything that enables more people to obtain diagnostic services BEFORE cancer advances to stage 4, is a good thing. No need to wait for anything to know that.
In a move both Reid and Obama railed against in the past they propose to eliminate the filibuster. A proposal they had a cow over when Republicans considered it WRT approving court nominees. Worse they plan on breaking the rules, to break the rules.
"Make no mistake, what [Reid] is proposing is a Senate where the only rule is his whim, where the rest of us are bystanders, including the members of his own party," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said. "The Democrats really want to go down this road? They really think they’re going to be in the majority forever?"
Also under consideration by Sen. Reid - utilizing the so-called "nuclear option" which would call for just a simple majority, or 51 votes, to change Senate rules. Changing the rules usually requires two-thirds of the chamber, or 67 votes. As Sen. McConnell so aptly put it: Sen. Reid is advocating "breaking the rules to change the rules."
This raw power grab would be a mistake - the ramifications of which would be felt for generations to come.
BS...this move was made necessary, by the GOPs exercising more filibusters in 2 years, than in the 50 years prior...COMBINED. the GOPs shameful behavior, has caused a need to alter the method by which the Senate functions. Dont like it? Then grow the hell up and act like an adult.
"Raw power grab" LOL! Letting the majority get their way--its practically unamerican!
Obama doesn't have a say in how the Senate changes their own rules, of course. And my reading is that the Democrats can change the Senate rules by majority whenever they want.
It is the GOP that has abused the rules by threatening filibusters at the drop of a hat.
Here's the thing: This will make very clear which party is proposing something, since it will actually become law. Right now the people have little idea of which policy proposals will work, since most of them are blocked from being made law and being tried out.
Unfortunately, this will only solve the Senatorial dilemma. The House, is still being led by spoiled 6 yr olds, who dont realize they LOST the election.
The Senate confirms many Administration appointments. This will get rid of the huge backlog of appointees that McConnell has been refusing to let come to the floor for an up or down confirmation vote.
House Dem candidates nationally, pulled more votes cumulatively, than did Republican House candidates.
The GOP lost seats in the House AND in the Senate.
The GOP would have lost the House entirely, had the 2010 gerrymandering been less massive in its scope. (As it was a census year, the GOP is pretty much assured House control, through 2020.)
You can not demonstrate wide spread voter fraud UNLESS, you are referring to the massive effort by the GOP, to dissuade people from voting in the first place.
Reading Tom Delay's book recently, ['No Retreat/No Surrender'] Dick Armey came in for Delay's only harsh treatment of all the republican leadership team working with Newt. Delay feels Armey was unusually self-centered/ambitious even for that setting and could not work with others.
Odd since Armey is good at projecting a sensible reasonable persona. Too bad since republicans really need good communicators and Armey is well spoken.
this year, Merriam-Webster broke with precedent and chose two words together, or as he said "a pairing of a kind." The 2012 words of the year are socialism and capitalism, words "that trended together, that show that when one was looked up, so was the other,"
"We saw a huge spike for 'socialism' on Election Day itself, but interest in both words was very high all year," says Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster. "Lookups of one word often led to lookups of the other."
makes you wonder exactly how many nimrods were tossing around that word long before election day.
One does have to wonder, how the anti-socialist GOP, justifies the vast defense spending that it does. Particularly when you realize, the military is a vast socialist complex. Free housing, free medical, subsidized groceries, subsidized big box shopping, subsidized air travel, uniforms provided, moves fully paid for, school system run by the organization, etc .
I forget where the discussion of bili's oil futures contract is so I'll resurrect this excellent thread to place this comment.
Algo traders went nuts the last time the oil inventory numbers spiked, driving the contract numbers down. The inventory just spiked again in a record way and this time the algos went nuts driving the contract numbers up!
I guess they figure the inventories last time represented desperate suppliers caught, and this time represent a belief insider knowledge expects large price increases.
Looks like you have at the very least a window to cash in big.
I'm at a loss to see what kind of a price hike they see coming that justifies storing oil at a minimum of $25gal/mo expense... a war maybe? I'll happily consider any other idea.