Saturday, November 24, 2012

Those Pesky Facts

To listen to the right, you'd think that unions are the worst evil since Social Security to afflict a country full of people otherwise just trying to make good by working hard in the old American way. To wit, during the eternal run-up to the election and still now--have you noticed that the right is more rabid than ever?--you have heard how the public employee unions by their dastardly pension plans and dangerously out of whack contracts are threatening civilization. That's right. Let these people bargain and let them have the hard-won rights won by the blood of working people in the early 20th century and the country will go to ruin.

But the pesky facts of the matter are that the people we have to blame, if we're going to be doing that, are the richest, most well-to-do in the society. Those pesky facts are in this article. A snippet:
CEOs and Financial Managers take much more than their share.

Corporate executives and financial employees make up just one-half of 1% of the workforce, but with nearly a trillion dollars of annual income (11.3% of $8.12 trillion), they make more than ALL 15 million unionized workers in the United States, and almost as much as ALL 21 million government workers. Much of their income derivesfrom minimally-taxed capital gains. Meanwhile, the great majority of their private company employees toil as food servers, clerks, medical workers, and domestic help at below-average pay.

The article also indicates with facts, figures, and percentages just how much government employees at all levels and union workers, all of them, earn compared to the with the fat cats we're talking about here. It's a scandal. But one that doesn't seem to bother much of anybody.



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