Capt.Slog

Irrelevant - you confuse company OWNERS with company EXECS. If Toyota and Honda can manage to find execs who'll work without exorbitant compensation, why can't US companies? www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3503728#3503728

In 2006 Toyota's top 37 executives earned a combined $21.6 million in salary and bonuses, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. U.K. firm Manifest Information Services, which analyzes proxy information, estimates Toyota's top executive, Hiroshi Okuda, earned $903,000 in 2006. At Honda, the top 21 earned $11.1 million, combined in 2006, in salary and bonuses, SEC filings show. Ford's CEO, Alan Mulally, got $27.8 million in salary and bonus in his first few months on the job, including an $18.5 million signing bonus. GM's CEO made $15.7 million in 2007, a year when GM LOST $39BILLION Anyone notice a pattern there?

Are you claiming that the FACT that raising the minimum wage in Florida did not increase unemployment (contrary to the predictions of the right) is somehow not objective? How can a FACT not be objective?

FACT != ENVY And the fact is that economic growth rate is uncorrelated with CEO/worker pay. The execs, through their good old boy networks (you sit on my board and I'll sit on yours), have come up with a sure fire way of enriching themselves, and stockholders have been asleep at the switch. We see this very clearly when they still award themselves huge bonuses while their corporations are tanking. ENVY != FACT, either. Your outrage over CEO compensation is illustrative of what, exactly? A firm belief that if you drive your company into the ground you should not reap a huge reward for doing so.

Interresting....the numbers don't back you up though. Retail sales in february rose by 0.7%. Before you start cheering, that numer is positive because of WalMart's performance. If you take WalMart out of the equasion retail sales are down 4.1% (And WalMart did not say their sales were driven by Wiis, IPhones or TVs, but simpler stuff like groceries.) What % of Walmart sales are "Made in the USA"? Maybe they're just keeping the Chinese economy going.

FACT != ENVY And the fact is that economic growth rate is uncorrelated with CEO/worker pay. The execs, through their good old boy networks (you sit on my board and I'll sit on yours), have come up with a sure fire way of enriching themselves, and stockholders have been asleep at the switch. We see this very clearly when they still award themselves huge bonuses while their corporations are tanking.

The gap between average worker's pay and average executive pay has been steadily widening. Yes it has! clicky

40 - 50 years ago was 1959 - 1969. And I thought engineers were good at 'rithmetic. Or is it your history that sucks?

What a load of BOLLOCKS. Now read this: Even With Economic Crisis, President Obama is More Popular Than Ever Posted March 4, 2009 BY Celeste Katz DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT Mr. President, Americans think you're the man. President Obama is more popular than ever, according to a new poll that shows two-thirds of the country feels "hopeful" about Obama's leadership. The Stimulus Win Gives Obama a Big Political Boost Obama now has a 60% approval rating, and people feel things are looking up since he took office, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. The percentage of those who say the country's "headed in the right direction" has skyrocketed compared to the number who felt that way before Obama took office. Now, 41% of Americans say the country's going the right way, compared to 26% who thought so just before Obama's inauguration. Forty-four percent of those polled still say the country's on "the wrong track" — but "given the economic conditions, pollsters expected it to be much higher," the Journal said. The survey found "a record 70%" of people very dissatisfied with the economy. Of course, not everyone likes the new president: About 28% of those polled said they feel "doubtful" about his plans. Most Americans still back Obama's expansive economic stimulus program, the poll found — even though a majority also feel it will help the economy only a little or possibly not at all. A solid 80% approve of Obama's plan to get most U.S. troops out of Iraq within 18 months. Just over half of those polled said the war has been a success, up from 43% who thought so last July. First Lady Michelle Obama has a solid fan base: She scored 63% positive ratings and just 8% negative ratings. And in a reversal from the rock-bottom ratings Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got just after she and her husband vacated the White House, Clinton had a record-breaking 59% of Americans viewing her in a positive light, compared to 22% who viewed her negatively. It's the Republicans who took the real beating: By a more than two to one margin, the Journal said, Americans trust Democrats over the GOP to pull the country out of the recession. The survey of just over 1,000 adults ran from Feb. 26 to March 1 and has an margin of error of about 3%.

He has that magic mirror, you know.

Did Rockefeller bankrupt his company and then take a huge bonus?

Didn't you get the memo? Only working class folks get to take the consequences of their actions. Corporate execs get "severance packages" when they fuck up the entire nation's economy.

No, they don't. The economy worked nicely 40 - 50 years ago when coporate execs didn't take home 1000x the income of the average employee. The justification for the huge bonuses isn't that they are needed, but that in the good times the execs could rape the company for them and no-one minded.

Who said that only business owners are the ones that pay their fair share (as your statement clearly implies)? How is "fair" defined? By how much YOU want to pay?

I can't decide if the PNAC is still "in charge" or not. Certainly it's not actually Limbaugh, but clearly there is some sort of struggle going on at the very top between the wealthy backers of the Republican Party and the people that want to be the "face" of it. I respectfully disagree. There is no clear Republican vision right now, and no obvious leader EXCEPT the talk show hosts, of which Rush is the clear leader. That Rush is an entertainer and a joke (unlike Reagan who was an entertainer but not a joke) says a lot about the state of the party. PNAC is no longer in charge, and deserves most of the blame for the dismal state of the GOP.

700,000 more jobs lost in February. Bush's recession is sure a doozy. Oh sorry, Republicans don't like us to use the "R" word. uk.reuters.com/article/companyNewsMolt/idUKN0453853020090304

Because the question is whether or not the current stimilus package is irresponsible spending. We won't be able to truly answer that question for several years, if ever. I think we can all agree that no spending would be catastrophic. but alot less spending by the gov would be great. Where were you when Bush was starting a $trillion war in Iraq?

+1 Name a politician that doesn't.... Does he have to be alive?

Do you have a source for this? Not being snarky, I'd really like to see evidence of this. I know that the Laffer curve predicts a rise in tax revenue with a reduction in tax rate, I've just never seen anyone show that it works in the real world. Thanks. The Laffer curve doesn't show where maximum revenue occurs relative to current tax rates. No-one actually knows. After correcting for inflation and population growth, revenues did NOT go up with the last round of tax cuts. "Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts. There's really no dispute among economists about that." Alan D. Viard, a former Bush White House economist later at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, 10/23/06 “It is very rare and very few economists believe that you can cut taxes and you will get the same amount of revenues.” – Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Testimony before House Budget Committee September 8, 2004 “I don’t think that, as a general rule, that tax cuts pay for themselves.” –Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Testimony before Joint Economic Committee April 27, 2006 “As a general matter, most tax cuts do not pay for themselves.” ; OMB Director Nominee Rob Portman Written Response to Questions Submitted Prior to Senate Budget Committee Nomination Hearing May 10, 2006 “[There is] no credible evidence that tax revenues ... rise in the face of lower tax rates.” “[An economist claiming tax cuts pay for themselves is like a] snake oil salesman who is trying to sell a miracle cure.” – Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers N. Gregory Mankiw Introductory college economics textbook, “Principles of Economics,” 1998

Funny he'd wonder about that, for a guy who spent a lot of time in Iowa. Maybe his memory is getting bad.

(Interesting questions on France’s involvement in ISAF, imo.) /Marg A YEAR AGO! Well! Who was president then?

Those Republican tax cuts sure did a good job of saving the economy, didn't they. What was it, over 600,000 lost their jobs in January alone?

OR CHINA'S lets not pretend.

May I suggest you'd like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan. Pretty much everyone is on their own over there.

That was the system in place 200 years ago. Before municipal fire brigades, insurance companies ran their own private brigades. In the event of a fire the firemen would check for a plaque on the building to see if the building belonged to their scheme before setting about tackling the blaze! Didn't work too well, lots of cities had uncontrollable fires because the original fire had been left to burn.