If you wanted to be rich, you should have become a CEO, Dumas! (I mean Dumb Ass)

Highlights from today’s Progress Report
Pay Cut Hits (Most Of) America Hard

Wage growth in 2004 and the first two months of 2005 trailed inflation, compounding the problems for a middle class already squeezed by higher housing and energy costs and the soaring price of health care. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports, “corporate profits hit record highs as companies got more productivity out of workers while keeping pay increases down.”

American workers saw a wage increase of just 2.5 percent in 2004(prices rose 2.7 percent)

According to a study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal, “the
median salary and bonus for chief executives in office at least two
years soared 14.5% last year to $2,470,600.” The cash-compensation
upsurge is “the biggest since the study began in 1989.”

..gas prices hit a record high
for the fourth week in a row this week. Research shows CEOs of oil
companies were, as a group, the highest paid executives in 2004, raking
in a median compensation package – not including potentially lucrative
gains from stock options – of $16.6 million. That was a gain of 109
percent over the previous year.

A study by AARP showed wholesale prices for popular brand-name prescription drugs rose by an average 7.1 percent in 2004,
“more than twice the general inflation rate.”

In a study of census data, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
found that “for the bottom 95 percent of workers, after-inflation wages
were flat or down in 2003 and 2004, but for the top 5 percent, wages
rose by an average of 1 percent, with some gaining much more. The
upper-income group enjoyed strong pay increases largely because of
bonuses, stock options and other inducements.”

The Great Machine is built upon violence and exploitation. -M