WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME
GOP Tax Law Hurts Workers...Again
'Absolutely Repulsive': After $1.5 Trillion Tax Giveaway to the Rich, Trump Cancels Modest Pay Raise for Federal Workers
Suddenly expressing deep concern for "fiscal sustainability" just months after signing a tax bill that is expected to add $1.9 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he is canceling pay raises for nearly 1.8 million federal workers because he claims "federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases." The president's abrupt move—which comes less than a week after a federal court struck down his attempt to undermine federal workers' right to bargain collectively—was met with widespread condemnation by progressive lawmakers and labor activists, who argued that the $25 billion Trump claimed the pay raises would cost is a drop in the bucket compared to the GOP's enormous gifts to the rich. "President Trump pushed through a tax scam that gave unprecedented handouts to billionaires and corporations—but believes it's too expensive to pay hardworking federal workers a reasonable wage," wrote Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). "What an insulting way to mark Labor Day." More
NOTE: Federal employees of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs take up half the salary bill
Corporate Profits Way Up – Wages, not so much. . .
2017 WAS A GREAT YEAR FOR CEOS.
Earnings for the top executives at America’s largest companies skyrocketed in 2017, while wages for the average worker hardly budged.
CEOs for the 350 largest US companies earned an average pay of $18.9 million in 2017, a sharp 17 percent increase from the previous year, according to a new study by the left leaning Economic Policy Institute. These estimates include salaries, bonuses, restricted stock grants, cashed-in company stock, and other forms of compensation for chief executives at those firms. Meanwhile, wages for the average US worker grew a paltry 0.2 percent during that time. This means that the CEOs made about 312 times more money than the average worker last year — an even larger gap than in 2016, when they made 270 times more money, according to EPI. But even more shocking is how much the gap has widened in the past 50 years: In 1965, CEOs earned only 20 times more than the average worker. More
The Arithmetic of the CEO-Worker Pay Divide
The Economic Policy Institute reported earlier this month that the average CEO of the 350 largest firms in the U.S. pocketed $18.9 million in 2017, a 17.6 percent pay increase over 2016. At the same time, typical worker compensation remained flat, rising merely 0.3 percent. If you do some quick math, dividing 17.6 percent by 0.3 percent, you might conclude that CEO pay in 2017 increased about 60 times faster than worker pay. But if you take a moment and do some more careful calculations, that CEO-worker pay gap will soar incredibly higher — to a CEO pay boost over 15,000 times the pay hike for workers. More
Centrist Think Tanks Ponder Populism’s Rise, but Hesitate to Change
The Center for American Progress (CAP), linked to the Democratic Party establishment, and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which is close to the Republican Party, have issued two long papers in recent months reflecting their high anxiety over the rapid growth of populism on both sides of the Atlantic — especially in light of the shocking success of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton and mainstream Republicans during the 2016 presidential election cycle. But the papers suggest that neither organization is ready to depart from the economic and military policies preferred by the powerful elites that still control the two major parties. And the more recent paper attacks Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders for being insufficiently hawkish in regard to Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). More
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