Companies paid top executives more than they paid in US taxes – report – Guardian

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Jack Welch, The Man Who Broke Capitalism – Forbes

“(Academics who have studied income inequality), most famously Thomas Piketty, draw a direct line between executive compensation and its absolutely relentless upward trajectory over the last decades, and the widening gap between the haves and have-nots.

“Welch’s own enormous executive compensation was immense. He was on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans simply for being a people manager. He didn’t invent anything. He didn’t own the company. He was hired help. And yet, he became something close to a billionaire. By doing so, he set a precedent for hundreds of other managers over the past several years to do the exact same thing. Now we don’t even blink when a CEO is rewarded with a $20- or $50 million-a-year pay package.

“As all that is happening, what’s happening to his workers? They’re getting laid off en masse. He’s outsourcing them to contractors who don’t pay nearly as good of wages as GE once did. He’s sending jobs overseas in search of low wages and taxes. At the same time, look at what’s happened to the American minimum wage: It’s stuck at $7.25 an hour. If it had just kept pace with inflation over the last 20 years, it would be closer to $25. But we live in this world that was shaped by Jack Welch’s priorities. And we’re still trying to dig out of that hole.”

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