But I am told the Wall Street Journal, except for its wildly ridiculous editorial page is “center”. Imagine an anti-union bias creeping into the news columns. I’m astonished!
You have a better one? Do tell. Or let us know why your think so.
Spoken like a true Vanderbilt!
Not for nothin’, but the rise of unions coincidentally happened with the rise of the middle class and the creation of more wealth than at any other time in history, in any other society in history, including the gilded age, the mercantile era, and the millennia of Kings. Perhaps your worries are just a bit overwrought?
The UAW has about 145,000 members. We’re not talking about GM employees, but UAW members. Second, Barra is far from the only one so egrigiously overpaid. The President makes $10m. The CFO makes $9m. The head of the supply chain makes $9m. The North America VP makes $10m. And I can assure you if they’re all that high, those right under them are also making huge salaries. (Now do the same for Ford and what’s-its-name, and you have a pretty good pot of money.)
Take Mary’s money and still give her $10m, that $19m extra is $10 bucks a week for every member. Take all of the overpaid e-suite member and bring them back to a fabulous but not insane salary, repeat at the other companies and you have plenty to put the line workers back into comfortable territory, and end the soul crushing “two tier” system.
This. And trying to manipulate financials via stock buybacks on a company of this scale is a fool’s game.
Always amusing to see Buffett (salary: $100,000) quoted in a thread about Mary’s $29,000,000 income. And Warren had to be buffaloed into doing buybacks because he is, for whatever reason, generally opposed to such. He gave in only because the cash kept stacking up and he couldn’t find anywhere else for it.
Rather than stock buybacks I would think a fairer system would be dividends to shareholders and bonuses tied to profitability (not stock price) for workers. But what do I know?