WSWS: The two Americas:

[NeoConsSuck]

The two Americas: Ronald Perelman’s $1.45 billion and the fate of Sunbeam’s workers.

The nearly one-and-a-half billion dollars awarded this week by a West Palm Beach, Florida jury—$604.3 million in compensatory damages and $850 million in punitive damages—to billionaire investor Ronald Perelman, at the expense of investment banker Morgan Stanley, is telling about the present state of affairs in America.

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The existence of two Americas is underscored by the opposed fates of Perelman and former Sunbeam chief executive Albert Dunlap, on the one hand, and thousands of Sunbeam employees, on the other.

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And Sunbeam’s workers? One has to search for hints of their fate. No one in the media has any great interest. Today Sunbeam, a subsidiary of American Household, Inc., has some 3,000 employees remaining in the US, Mexico and Venezuela.

Three of Sunbeam’s closed plants were located in Waynesboro, Georgia, Coushatta, Louisiana and Portland, Tennessee. These are not wealthy communities. They have been made considerably poorer by the plant closings.

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The $1.45 billion that Ronald Perelman potentially picked up this week is six times the yearly income of the 17,000 residents of Waynesboro, Georgia, Coushatta, Louisiana and Portland, Tennessee combined. This is America in 2005.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/may2005/perl-m21.shtml