'The Guilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/01



Aggressive lobbying effort fights disclosure of just how big the income disparities are

'The Guilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See
-Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Wednesday, May 1, 2013 by Common Dreams

If there's one thing about what many are calling the "The New Guilded Age," it's that well-known corporations—not to mention less well-known, but extremely powerful ones—will fight extremely hard to keep secret just how lopsided the economic disparities have become in recent decades between low-paid workers in the society and the executive and ruling class that have reaped the words of a globalized, top-heavy economy.

In but one example, the CEO of JC Penny in 2011 made 1,795 times the amount of money as the average paid worker at the retail chain. Overall, the CEO-to-worker gap is up nearly 20 percent since 2009. What the numbers show, once again, is that in the US economy, some workers are more equal than others.

And as Bloomberg news reports, new disclosure laws designed to reveal the income gap between top executives and regular workers within their companies has been stonewalled by an aggressive lobbying effort at the Security and Exchange Commission. Among the corporations waging war against requirements imposed by the Dodd-Frank financial law are McDonald's, General Electric, and AT&T—all led, according to Bloomberg, by "a Washington-based non-profit called the HR Policy Association, which represents top human resources executives at about 335 large corporations."

~snip~

Giving an explanation for all this, Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, told Bloomberg in an interview, “It’s not that (CEOs or investor capital) hates labor, or wants to crush their lives. They just don’t care.”

[Newest Reality]

1. Animal Farm!

The perception is actually what matters most and the actuality be damned.

Life under corporate rule is like a commercial. It's funny, life-changing, musical, artistic, racy, cutting edge, customized to you, etc. Then, after the purchase, the reality sets in.

[bemildred]

2. Public Corporations have no right to privacy whatsoever.

They are entirely fictional legal creations and they have only such powers are they are given by the government. The notion that their need to "compete" outweighs our human and political rights is self-serving crap.