The “Free Market” Takes Its Pound Of Flesh, But Never From The Failed CEO

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/free-market-takes-its-pound-flesh-never-failed-ceo



I can’t let Detroit go partly because there is so much to learn from the robbery that took place in the past and is continuing to this day. Today, let’s consider for a moment the price regular workers pay when something goes bad versus the price CEOs never pay when something goes askew. It’s a telling story about the deep corruption of the system.

In one corner, we have tens of thousands of workers — regular people who just went to work every day, did their jobs for a few decades and all they want is to keep the pension they basically saved for. Saved because pensions aren’t free money — those pensions are deferred wages, money workers didn’t take home in a monthly pay check but, wisely, put off using that money until later in their lives.

The so-called “free market” — enabled by a bi-partisan love affair with so-called “free trade” (which ripped away decent jobs from Detroit and hammered down wages); profiteering in health care (because no one had the the balls or political will to destroy two of the most parasitic industries ever to leech off human beings: the drug and insurance industries); and Wall Street thieves who destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth because of the greed of a handful of Robert Rubin types — robbed Detroit.

Workers did nothing wrong in Detroit. Nothing.

And, yet, they are now being asked to pay for the sins of a corrupt system. By handing over a huge chunk of the money they had put aside in deferred wages. And, then, they are being told when they appeal to the White House — to a president who is talking about the divide between rich and poor — for financial assistance, basically, to drop dead. Twice, actually.

[abelenkpe]

1. K&R

[nykym]

2. The government is also getting screwed

out of tax dollars, if the pension wages are deferred and not taxed now.
When one retires they have to pay the tax, yes it may be at a lower rate but it is still money the Fed is missing out on.

[Bake]

3. They're "driving the costs out of the business"

Except, of course, for the cost of executive salaries. Of course.

BAke

[badtoworse]

4. What about the morons that ran the city? Don't they wear any blame?

Borrowing billions to pay current expenses in the face of a declining tax base isn't the brightest move I've ever seen.

[Catherina]

5. Always our flesh. n/t

[Rex]

7. And they call it 'sacrifice', funny it only is for the working class.

You NEVER EVER see the WH or Congress or the M$M ask a CEO to 'sacrifice' his salary! And then we send our military professionals off to foreign lands so they can commit the 'ultimate sacrifice' while the CEOs rake in billions over their still warm corpses.

Under any other system, we would have rebelled long ago...but since we live in a consumers paradise and the land of apathy...I think we will take it until each and every one of our spines is crushed under the weight of management.

One backbone at a time.

[Rex]

6. Disaster capitalism flourishes in an unregulated market.

It is like the S&L thefts never ended. Now, we the working class are expected to pony up for the uber elite classes failures. I wonder how much of this we can take?