Friday, June 08, 2012

The Private Sector IS Doing Fine. You Aren't the Private Sector.

Just a little note about the bullshit story du jour. American companies and executive pay? Laughing all the way to the bank.

In the fourth quarter, profits at American businesses were up an astounding 29.2 percent, the fastest growth in more than 60 years. Collectively, American corporations logged profits at an annual rate of $1.678 trillion.

And the big bosses?

For the average C.E.O., however, the good times have returned. The median pay for top executives at 200 major companies was $9.6 million last year. That was a 12 percent increase over 2009, according to a study conducted for The New York Times by Equilar, a compensation consulting firm based in Redwood City, Calif.

But what about the workers?

Between 2007 and 2010, working-class people -- those in nonprofessional occupations who lack college degrees -- saw their median earnings fall 4.6 percent, according to a study of U.S. census data prepared for Bloomberg News by Sentier Research of Annapolis, Maryland. Over the same period, earnings for college-educated professionals or managers rose 1.9 percent.

Working-class males were especially hard hit, with median annual earnings falling 6.6 percent, more than three times the 1.9 percent loss suffered by all employees, according to the study, an effort to quantify the recession’s impact on labor.

And yet...

For Romney, mobilizing blue-collar victims of the recession is essential to victory in November. In 2008, non-college- educated whites -- key players in every successful Republican presidential campaign for four decades -- accounted for 39 percent of the electorate, exit polls showed. And white working- class voters potentially make up more than half the electorate in states such as Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

“This is his base. He needs to turn them out in large numbers,” says Henry Olsen, a political analyst at the Republican-leaning American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “He needs large numbers and large margins.”

Honestly folks, we need to learn the lesson. And if Bush didn't teach us, I shudder to think what it will take...