Why should any of us work hard?
Rant via ‘gma’
When the top execs of Corporate America take 99% of the profit?
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/special_packages/salary_survey/3428784.htm
Nobody “earns” 700 million. Larry Ellison may have done 7 time or even 70 times more work than I, but not 700, and definitely not 7000. Same goes for Gates, Ballmer, Eisner and yes, Steve.
Any system in which there is too much inbalance will break down. The same thing that happened to feudal monarchy will happen to Corporate America.
I believe the conditions are ripe for a revolution within the next five to ten years. What holds the current system in place is everyone’s hope of making it big themselves. We all think we have a stake in the status quo. But the internet stock market boom and the subsequent bust has shown there are really only a handful of people who make money, and they will always make money whether the economy is good or not.
Why are we working hard for a system which rewards us so little? Both in terms of how we are valued and how we get paid. The wage slaves of the 20th century will look very similar to future generations as peasants of the 17th century.
guillotine time!
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6 Replies to “Why should any of us work hard?”
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Steve gets an annual salary of $1.00
Of course he’s got stock, and a Gulfsteam Jet, but hell, he started the company, right?
Aside from all this, the bottom line is most companies take for granted their most valuable and least credited resource: good people.
What’s “rant via gma” mean anyhow?
It means the rant was written by ‘gma’ and posted by ‘trk’…
Good rant, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are far far worse injustices in the world… The revolution is coming, but what will we do with it? to make sure it creates a fair and just system we need a multiethnic revolutionary workers party. we have to avoid those fucking beurocrats.
How do you think the system will “break down”? There are a lot of people who would resist change. You think middle class suburbia wants an economic revoution? Not likely. The average John Doe is more worried about paying off their house and sending their kids to college than American corporate injustices. Not going to happen, in my opinion.
I don’t expect the full western capitalist society to break down. There is too much riding on it and it’s still the best system out there.
What I was getting at was the system of corporate governence. The way top execs of corporates are running unchecked in their plundering of the companies that they run. Nither the shareholders nor the employees get much in the ways of control or profit.
The way the current corporate system is set up allows a very small percentage of people to basically rob everyone else in the system.
That’s the system that needs to be thrown out! Those are the people the guillotines are for!
The sad thing is, this problem was spotted back in the 1920s.
From the progressive party manifesto of 1912:
The people of the United States are swindled out of many millions of dollars every year, through worthless investments. The plain people, the wage-earner and the men and women with small savings, have no way of knowing the merit of concerns sending out highly colored prospectuses offering stock for sale, prospectuses that make big returns seem certain and fortunes easily within grasp.
We hold it to be the duty of the Government to protect its people form this kind of piracy. We, therefore, demand wise carefully- thought-out legislation that will give us such Governmental supervision over this matter as will furnish to the people of the United States this much-needed protection, and we pledge ourselves thereto.
Yes, there is much cruft. But, government sactioned measures are hardly effective… a bunch of paid for yes men spewing fabricated injustice as punishment. Personal responsability must enter into it from both sides, the teaching of which has little voice. People must push against the injustice of small minded gluttony… with everything they have, and only when there is no more will those who pretend to have the power respond. Never fear, there is always more to be discovered, and they’ve a hard time to persuade us of the lack of the benefits of a vegetable garden. Push for what is right and vestigilize the rest.