CEO Wealth Rises

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The Economic Policy Institute shows that the top executives at the largest corporations in the United States now make 320 times more than what their typical employees earn in wages and benefits.



 EPI’s latest annual analysis of executive compensation finds that the CEOs of the top 350 firms in the U.S. raked in an average of $21.3 million in 2019, a 14 percent increase from 2018. The 320-1 ratio of CEO-to-worker pay in 2019 is more than five times higher than the 61-1 ratio reported in 1989.

EPI’s new report shows that CEO compensation grew by 1,167 percent from 1978 to 2019, “far outstripping” the growth of the stock market.


“CEOs who volunteer to take salary cuts aren’t giving up a lot given how much of their pay comes from stock awards and options,” EPI said.


Lawrence Mishel, a distinguished fellow at EPI and co-author of the new report, said in a statement that “while wage growth for the majority of Americans has remained relatively stagnant for decades, CEO compensation continues to balloon.”


“This has fueled the spectacular income growth of the top 0.1% and 1.0% and the growth of income inequality overall,” said Mishel, who told The Washington Post that CEO pay could rise again in 2020 despite the nationwide economic collapse caused by the Covid-19 crisis. “CEOs offering salary cuts during the coronavirus pandemic yield press releases,” Mishel added, “but no real progress toward reducing inequality and raising workers’ wages.”


Jori Kandra, research assistant at EPI and co-author of the new report, said the “huge growth in CEO pay” over the past four decades “is not a reflection of the market for talent.”
“We know this because CEO compensation has grown more than three times faster than the growth of earnings for the top 0.1% of earners, which was 337% over the same period,” said Kandra. “This means that CEO pay can be curbed to reduce the growing gap between the highest earners and everyone else with little, if any, impact on the output of the economy or firm performance.”


https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/18/wages-stagnate-and-executive-pay-continues-balloon-report-shows-top-ceos-now-make



An Israeli War Crime?

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 Netanyahu cut off fuel for the sole power plant in the Gaza Strip. The denial of fuel to the Gaza Strip came in response to Hamas sending balloons and kites over Israeli territory with incendiary materials attached. The balloons have caused some brush fires. 



 In retaliation Israeli fighter jets have bombed Gaza on several occasions during the past week. The Israelis have also stopped Palestinians from fishing. Now they will have electricity for only 4 hours daily.



 The General Union of Worker Organizations in Gaza estimated that 90% of the Gaza Strip’s factories and workshops would be idled by the closure of the power plant. That is some 500 factories that will be left dark, leaving 50,000 workers unemployed.

Waste water treatment will also be impeded, meaning more raw sewage going into the Mediterranean.

Hospital patients are at special risk from lack of electricity. The spokesman for the Gaza ministry of health, Dr. Ashraf al-Qudra, said that the lack of power poses a threat to premature babies nurseries, to patients in intensive care units, and to kidney patients (dialysis needs electricity). It will also halt surgeries and deliveries by Caesarean section.

While the incendiary balloons are condemnable and justify Israeli bombing of Hamas facilities, but cutting of diesel supplies to the whole population is not.

It is collective punishment on a mass scale.

After the Rwanda genocide, a special court was set up to judge war crimes and Shane Darcy notes, “The Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) enumerates collective punishment as a war crime…”

As Doctors without Borders notes, “International humanitarian law posits that no person may be punished for acts that he or she did not commit. It ensures that the collective punishment of a group of persons for a crime committed by an individual is also forbidden…”

Hamas has 30,000 activists in its military wing. The smaller Islamic Jihad, which is not affiliated with Hamas and often defies it, is thought to have 6,000 fighters. So there are like 36,000 combatants in Gaza and nearly 2 million noncombatants, i.e. persons who do not take direct part in hostilities.

Tougher at the bottom

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Researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) found that the most vulnerable groups in society have been hit hardest financially by Covid-19.



 Low-paid workers are three times more likely than their well-off counterparts to have seen their hours halved during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study.




People who are young, low-paid, black, in self-employment, those who have low education levels or live in large families have been disproportionately affected by the recession, according to the analysis.
Long-term scars to people’s prospects may be even deeper than in past recessions, the researchers wrote.
They calculate that scarring will disproportionately impact groups that are already relatively disadvantaged. For employees who were earning less than £151 per week in February, the probability of being furloughed or having their hours cut by at least half almost three times higher than for those earning more than £600 per week (53.7 per cent compared to 18 per cent).
Black workers have also suffered relatively more – around 42 per cent were estimated to have been furloughed in June compared to 27.6 per cent of the total workforce.
Similarly, younger workers have seen their hours and earnings cut. Those aged 18-24 who were still employed in June were almost 18 per cent more likely than those aged 35-54 to have had their hours cut by at least half or to have been furloughed.
Individuals with only GCSE qualifications or equivalent are 17.1 per cent more likely to have been furloughed or lost at least half of working hours compared with those with a degree.
Professor Bell said: “Some individuals will be affected harder than others. We find those most likely to become unemployed are the young, those with a lower level of qualifications, black workers and those on low pay.”

Real Suffering in the UK

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Poverty and destitution. That’s the reality for thousands of migrants in the UK since the pandemic started.
As lockdown hit, migrants across the nation who often work in casual and low-paid roles saw their jobs disappear or incomes slashed. But unlike the rest of the country, they have no welfare safety net to fall back on, because a controversial immigration policy known as No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) means they cannot access benefits.
There are an estimated 1.4 million migrants to the UK from outside the EU who have visas subject to this rule, according to the Migration Observatory, at the University of Oxford.
These migrants cannot receive most government-funded benefits, including child benefit, child tax credits, council tax benefit and disability living allowance or even free school dinners for their children. As a last resort, many migrants are having to turn to charities for help.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) pointed out that,  “…we’ve seen an increase in people becoming street homeless, acutely hungry and not being able to afford even basic medication because they literally have no support available to them.”
Since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, the Citizens Advice Bureau says it receives calls every 20 minutes from migrants desperate to access benefits.
The charity Khalsa Aid set up a food parcel delivery service soon after lockdown, responding to migrants on student visas and undocumented migrants who were struggling to feed themselves. The charity’s workers are delivering more than 200 food parcels each week. Not much but even a little helps.
Charities across the sector, the Local Government Association and the Work and Pensions Committee have recommended the government suspend NRPF altogether during the coronavirus crisis. MP Stephen Timms, who chairs the committee, says: “What we need is for the ‘no recourse to public funds’ restriction to be suspended for the duration of this crisis. So that hard-working, law-abiding families can apply for universal credit, just as three million other people have done since this crisis began.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel insists there are safeguards in place to support those affected and that the policy is in the public interest. Migrants who are applying for, or who have, leave to remain on family or private life grounds can apply to the Home Office for NRPF to be lifted. But the decision can take months.

Lockdown and locked out of school

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Lockdown widened learning gaps between richer and poorer primary school children, an analysis of thousands of families in England suggests.
Children from poorer families did at least one hour less learning a day compared with those in richer families, the Institute of Fiscal Studies found.
One head teacher says it could take up to two years to bring some children back to their correct attainment level.
The IFS surveyed the parents of 5,500 school-aged children in England during lockdown. It compared the richest 20% of pupils with the poorest 20%. In May, the IFS said children from wealthier families were spending more time studying during the pandemic than poorer children. And in its latest research, the think tank gives a more detailed picture of how coronavirus has widened the gap between the richest and poorest primary school children. Its findings suggest richer primary school children spent 75 minutes a day more on educational activities, compared with those in poorer families during lockdown.
Resources provided by schools are also unequally distributed, the IFS suggested. Around 42% of poorer primary-aged children received some sort of online lesson, conference call or support from their school, compared to 58% of richer children. And the IFS said it found evidence suggesting children who have had better access to learning resources are also more likely to spend more time learning than children who do not. 
Richer children were (37%) more likely to have their own space to study than their poorer counterparts. And although a large majority of children from all backgrounds had access to a computer or tablet, richer children were also more likely to have access to a computer or tablet.
Kirsty Tennyson is Executive Principal of the Three Saints Academy Trust and explained,  “In a deprived area there is already a gap that we’re striving to close – to narrow and ultimately to close the gap,” she says. “Children who have not got that support at home and have not been able to access that learning – that gap will have grown hugely.” She admits there is a mountain to climb. “This is going to take into this academic year and the one after to really get those children back to where they need to be and for some children it will take longer.”

Inequality in USA

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 For Every $100.00 in Median White Wealth, Black People Have $8.70


In 1968, it was $9.43. It keeps getting worse for beaten-down Americans. In the past twenty years, median income for Black households has dropped 5 percent while increasing 6 percent for White households. This year the Black and Latino communities have suffered the greatest effects of the coronavirus pandemic.


 Because of their job losses and lack of savings and inability to maintain rent payments, they will be taking the brunt of a growing housing crisis, especially in the big cities, where rent for Millennials is already over two-thirds of their incomes. Black and Latino households are also more like to face food insufficiencies. Yet the Trump administration recently considered cuts to the food stamp program.


After building their businesses on 70 years of taxpayer-funded research and development, Apple/Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Facebook have expanded their composite net worth to almost $7 trillion, while avoiding over a hundred billion dollars in taxes. 


Capitalism at Work

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 The Institute for Policy Studies shows that the dozen richest American billionaires now collectively own more than $1 trillion in wealth, a finding one analyst described as “a disturbing milestone in the U.S. history of concentrated wealth and power.”



 According to IPS, the 12 top U.S. billionaires have seen their combined wealth soar by 40%—or $283 billion—since the coronavirus began spreading rapidly across the U.S. in mid-March, sparking widespread economic shutdowns and mass job loss.



 “During the first stage of the pandemic, between January 1 and March 18, the collective wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen declined by $96 billion,” wrote IPS researchers Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo. “But their wealth quickly rebounded and surpassed their September 2019 Forbes 400 wealth level. The only exception is Warren Buffett, who is still $2 billion below his September 2019 wealth, but is currently worth $80 billion.”

Last Thursday, the billionaires’ combined wealth reached $1.015 trillion—the first time in U.S. history that the collective net worth of the top 12 American billionaires has topped the trillion-dollar mark. According to IPS, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth jump by $48.5 billion since mid-March, making him the “biggest pandemic profiteer” of the group.


“The total wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen is greater than the GDP of Belgium and Austria combined,” said Ocampo. “Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans are unemployed or living paycheck to paycheck, and 170,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States.”


“This is simply too much economic and political power in the hands of twelve people,” Collins, director of IPS’ Program on Inequality and the Common Good, said in a statement.


The dozen wealthiest U.S. billionaires and their respective net worth as of August 13 are:

Jeff Bezos—$189.5 billion Bill Gates—$114.1 billion Mark Zuckerberg—$95.5 billion Warren Buffett—$80.6 billion Elon Musk—$73.1 billion Steve Ballmer—$71.5 billion Larry Ellison—$70.9 billion Larry Page—$67.4 billion Sergey Brin—$65.6 billion Alice Walton—$62.6 billion Jim Walton—$62.3 billion Rob Walton—$62.03 billion https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/17/disturbing-milestone-just-12-us-billionaires-now-own-more-1-trillion-combined-wealth



Campaign from the left – Govern from the right!

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“…The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement…”  Frederick Engels to the American socialists when the labor movement in New York City nominated the non-socialist reformer Henry George for mayor in 1886   If you are always complaining about the number of socialist, anti-capitalist and otherwise radical-left parties in the United States and keep wondering why when America is already well provided with a multiplicity of left-wing parties, why the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) is added to this profusion of the confusion? The answer is there is no way of challenging and refuting the spurious programs of the parties which promise to reform capitalism except by building up from the ground an organization of socialists working only for socialism.


Joe Biden believes that capitalism can work if it is properly tethered and reined in. And we have a plethora of political commentators urging us that Biden is the best choice when the other option is Trump.

It is well worth offering the analysis of Eugene Debs when it comes to the US electoral circus.

“…Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists…”

“…To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather., it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation ol the workers, and for wage-slavery…”

In contrast to the capitalist parties he argues that:

“…Unlike the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Socialist Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and policies which all may understand. It was not framed merely with a view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues; no possibility of double construction. There is no attempt to compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce and to insure to every individual full and free opportunity to labor. The elector who casts his vote for its candidates may do so with the positive assurance that whenever the opportunity arises every pledge of the party platform will be carried out to the letter. The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its ultimate aim is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit…”

Radical activists do a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class political independence. By trying to get Joe Biden to say and do what leftist want him to say and do, is to engage in a pathetic and puerile political ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics. It is readily admitted by many in the liberal progressive movement that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by moneyed interests. And we know that the Democratic Party represents corporate interests. So no matter what the candidates say or do, they are still being controlled by the two-party system which is disempowering.

  Regardless that Biden may seem a genuine and honorable man to the electorate, once such a sincere person is elected to office in any government anywhere, they become the captive of capitalism, compelled by the system to represent the interests of the ruling class of the nation state, which ever nation state it happens to be. Some voters will respond, “surely, a little is better than nothing?” Except it will always result in nothing, because capitalism can never serve the exploited.

  The WSPUS espouse the theory that poverty, unemployment, racial oppression and environmental destruction are not simply side–effects of capitalism but are vital part of it. This is something that Eugene Debs understood only too very well. The membership of the WSPUS is minuscule, it is true, but there is no alternative to world socialism if the planet is to have a future.

Campaign from the left – Govern from the right!

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“…The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement…”  Frederick Engels to the American socialists when the labor movement in New York City nominated the non-socialist reformer Henry George for mayor in 1886   If you are always complaining about the number of socialist, anti-capitalist and otherwise radical-left parties in the United States and keep wondering why when America is already well provided with a multiplicity of left-wing parties, why the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) is added to this profusion of the confusion? The answer is there is no way of challenging and refuting the spurious programs of the parties which promise to reform capitalism except by building up from the ground an organization of socialists working only for socialism.


Joe Biden believes that capitalism can work if it is properly tethered and reined in. And we have a plethora of political commentators urging us that Biden is the best choice when the other option is Trump.

It is well worth offering the analysis of Eugene Debs when it comes to the US electoral circus.

“…Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists…”

“…To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather., it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation ol the workers, and for wage-slavery…”

In contrast to the capitalist parties he argues that:

“…Unlike the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Socialist Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and policies which all may understand. It was not framed merely with a view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues; no possibility of double construction. There is no attempt to compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce and to insure to every individual full and free opportunity to labor. The elector who casts his vote for its candidates may do so with the positive assurance that whenever the opportunity arises every pledge of the party platform will be carried out to the letter. The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its ultimate aim is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit…”

Radical activists do a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class political independence. By trying to get Joe Biden to say and do what leftist want him to say and do, is to engage in a pathetic and puerile political ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics. It is readily admitted by many in the liberal progressive movement that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by moneyed interests. And we know that the Democratic Party represents corporate interests. So no matter what the candidates say or do, they are still being controlled by the two-party system which is disempowering.

  Regardless that Biden may seem a genuine and honorable man to the electorate, once such a sincere person is elected to office in any government anywhere, they become the captive of capitalism, compelled by the system to represent the interests of the ruling class of the nation state, which ever nation state it happens to be. Some voters will respond, “surely, a little is better than nothing?” Except it will always result in nothing, because capitalism can never serve the exploited.

  The WSPUS espouse the theory that poverty, unemployment, racial oppression and environmental destruction are not simply side–effects of capitalism but are vital part of it. This is something that Eugene Debs understood only too very well. The membership of the WSPUS is minuscule, it is true, but there is no alternative to world socialism if the planet is to have a future.

A boom or a slump?

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The S&P 500, one of the widest and most prominent US market measures, has hit a new high despite ongoing worries about the sharp economic impact of the pandemic to close at 3,389.78 – about three points above its 19 February record.



 The Nasdaq hit another record after surpassing its prior high in June while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is within about 5% of its February record.



 US shares have been on an upward path since 23 March. Analysts say the recovery is partly due to America’s central bank a slew of unprecedented economic support measures, Federal Reserve moves and other stimulus, as well as demand from investors who are confident the economy will heal and see few better opportunities to make money than on the stock markets.



 Japan, which has seen its Nikkei 225 index climb back to roughly 4% of its pre-crisis high, has benefited from both aggressive government stimulus and relative success at controlling the virus without mass lockdowns.



 But the gains in the US have outstripped many other markets. London’s FTSE 100 remains about 20% lower than its January high, while France’s CAC 40 is off about 19%.

The unusual strength of the US rebound comes from its tech companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, which have been seen as winners despite lockdowns, along with companies in areas like cloud computing and machine learning.
“We would not be flirting with all-time highs were it not for technology,” said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at US Bank Wealth Management.
Shares in the S&P 500’s tech sector have climbed roughly 25% so far this year, even as other areas remain flat or negative. 
Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said that’s a warning sign for those who might want to see the new S&P 500 high as a signal about the broader economy.
“There’s big dispersion between those that have done well and those that have done poorly,” he said.  Of the 500 companies in the index, more than half have shares trading lower than they were start of the year, he said.

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