'The Gilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See

[Fire Walk With Me]

https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/01#.UYgTXcRdlsc.twitter

If there's one thing about what many are calling the "The New Gilded Age," it's that well-known corporations—not to mention less well-known, but extremely powerful ones—will fight extremely hard to keep secret just how lopsided the economic disparities have become in recent decades between low-paid workers in the society and the executive and ruling class that have reaped the words of a globalized, top-heavy economy.

In but one example, the CEO of JC Penney in 2011 made 1,795 times the amount of money as the average paid worker at the retail chain. Overall, the CEO-to-worker gap is up nearly 20 percent since 2009. What the numbers show, once again, is that in the US economy, some workers are more equal than others.

And as Bloomberg news reports, new disclosure laws designed to reveal the income gap between top executives and regular workers within their companies have been stonewalled by an aggressive lobbying effort at the Security and Exchange Commission. Among the corporations waging war against requirements imposed by the Dodd-Frank financial law are McDonald's, General Electric, and AT&T—all led, according to Bloomberg, by "a Washington-based non-profit called the HR Policy Association, which represents top human resources executives at about 335 large corporations."

From Bloomberg:

Almost three years after Congress ordered public companies to reveal actual CEO-to-worker pay ratios under the Dodd-Frank law, the numbers remain unknown. As the Occupy Wall Street movement and 2012 election made income inequality a social flashpoint, mandatory disclosure of the ratios remained bottled up at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which hasn’t yet drawn up the rules to implement it. Some of America’s biggest companies are lobbying against the requirement.

(More at the link.)

[blackspade]

1. WTF!?

And why has the Securities and Exchange Commission not drawn up the rules yet?
Sounds like whoever heads the commission is breaking the law.

[sabrina 1]

2. No one is watching the store. It is all theirs now. Who is going to make them do anything when

everyone is bought, see Obama's nomination of Pritzger as Commerce Sec eg, a woman who should have been investigated for her role in the Sub Prime Mortgage scandal, but who he calls one of 'our most accomplished businesswomen'. She has billions, that is all that matters now.

The question is that now that we can see it all so clearly, what can we do about it? Is it too late to save this country? Or will it just finally admit it is no longer a democracy and stop the pretense. It is full on Corporate State, with two classes, the middle class is all but gone, so we have the underpaid, and the obscenely wealthy who are busy desconstructing (see cuts to SS from DEMOCRAT) what used to be programs that benefited the people.

We get the government we deserve. We have people right here on this site excusing each step towards the destruction of the Middle Class and every other corporate decision coming out of DC mainly because a Dem is in the WH. They were clever, they knew they needed to get 'the left' on board, and they did it.

[blackspade]

3. NO arguement from me.

My question was somewhat rhetorical anyway.

[infidel dog]

4. What can we do about it? Is it too late? Will we give up the pretense of democracy?

Precious little, yes, and no. You're absolutely right about getting the government we deserve, sabrina 1. Breaks my heart to agree, but you're absolutely right. Our corporate masters find it convenient to maintain the pretense of a democracy; important to hold to forms and traditions, you know, but the game has been over for forty years.

[bvar22]

5. This chart tells the ugly story.

THIS IS the Number ONE Issue in America today:


When does the Trickle Down start?