I read a post today that said that some oil company CEO --

[OneBlueSky]

don't recall which one -- made $32 million last year . . .

trying to comprehend what $32 million looks like, I thought of someone earning, say, $100,000/year -- a comfortable income . . . if my calculations are correct, it would take that individual 320 years to earn the same amount that this thief legally stole in one year . . . (the money did, after all, come from those historic oil industry profits generated by the rapid and rigged rise in pump prices that WE PAID) . . .

extrapolating, if you earned $50,000/year, it would take you 640 years to make $32 million . . . if you made $25,000, 1,280 years! . . .

and this was his take for only one year! . . .

something is very, very wrong with this kind of discrepency between not even rich and the poor, but between the rich and the upper to lower middle class . . . no nation can survive this kind of disparity . . .

besides that -- I mean, shit, how much does one person need? . . .

[babylonsister]

1. I've been wondering the same thing; how much is enough?

No one cares about the middle class? Does everyone/anyone have a clue of what's happening, do they care?

[praeclarus]

2. this is not a new phenomenon...

... and didn't just start this year with oil company CEOs.

The wealth in this, the most prosperous country on earth,
is abnormally concentrated with a small percentage of people
holding by far the greatest percentage of wealth.

And it gets worse all the time ... witness for example the
estate tax break and who exactly that benefits.

On edit: Ok, I went a-googling and got better numbers from
2001...

Top 1% own 32.7%
Top 5% own 57.7% (leaves less than half for the other 95%)
Top 10% own 70%

http://neweconomist.blogs.com/new_economist/2005/11/wealth_inequali.html

..the United States exhibits the highest degree of wealth concentration, with the largest shares of total wealth in the hand of the richest percentiles of the wealth distribution. The lowest values are found in, among others, Australia, Italy, Japan and Sweden, and intermediate values in Canada, France and the United Kingdom.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. some numbers...

the pretax income share of the top 1% of the American income distribution jumped from 8% in 1980 to 9% in 1985 to 13% in 1990 to 17% in 2000 to 14% today. Over the same period the income share of the next 4% has risen from 13% to 15%, and the income share of the still next 5% has stayed at 12%. The top tenth of the American income distribution increased its share from 33% in 1980 to 41% today--with three-quarters of that increase going to the top 1% and fully one-quarter of that increase going to the top 0.01%.

What skills and assets do the top 1% of America's pretax income distribution have today that lead the market to grant them 14% of total income, when their counterparts back in 1980 were granted only 8% of total income? What skills and assets do the top 0.01% of the American pretax income distribution--that's 12,000 tax units--that led the market to grant them 100 times average income in 1980, and 300 times average income today?

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/01/dist112506.html

[skids]

7. It does occasionally get better.

[muesa]

3. I think it was the CEO of Texaco-Chevron

The retiring CEO of Exxon-Mobil got a golden parachute of several hundred million - I went to Bangalore and don't make that much --:shrug: (At least I can look at myself in the mirror and sleep at night).

[drdtroit]

6. They can look in the mirror also,

however there is no reflection.
Ergo, no problem sleeping!
:patriot:

[The Straight Story]

5. even more sick - $15,384 per hour

a 40hr week is 2080 hours a year (not to mention vacation, sick time, etc).

That's $15384/hour.

[Erika]

8. Yet big business is against raising the minimum wage

The CEO's have become the new imperialist rulers.