COLUMN LEFT : Overfed CEOs Are Asking for a Revolution : Cutting royal deals in pay and perks is an exercise in freedom, but only for the elites.
The peoples of the Eastern Bloc nations and the former Soviet Union directed their collective anger not so much at the dreamy ideals of communism but at its shameful practices. After years of witnessing the abuses and corruptions of power, the people could take no more, and their accumulated indignation exploded into a rage that toppled a modern superpower.
Economic ineptness--the failure to meet demands for consumer goods--was not the Soviet government’s greatest sin. What the people evidently despised most about their communist leaders was hypocrisy, the failure to live up to their own egalitarian ideals. Yet the differentials in pay, perquisites and power that exposed the Soviet communists as cynical hypocrites and ultimately brought about their demise were meager, in fact pathetic, compared with some of the contradictions in the American capitalist system.
For instance, major CEOs in Japan earn 17 times that of the average worker; in France and Germany the rate is 23 to 25 times; in Britain, 35 times. CEOs in the United States, however, are paid 85 to 100 times what workers earn. Our corporate executives now reward themselves with fat salaries approaching $100 million per year--or more, in some cases.
At the same time, real wages of American workers have fallen steadily for the last decade, even though worker productivity has risen during that entire period. Tragically, one out of every seven Americans lives below the poverty line.
The usual reply to the charge that our business leaders are robbing us blind is that the “market” warrants such gross wage discrepancies and justifies golden parachute bailouts. Such is “freedom” under capitalism.
Yet the market doesn’t dictate every transaction under capitalism. Many jobs in our system are historically insulated from market forces because, the theory goes, we want to attract to these positions dedicated people who will be motivated for the right reasons, who won’t be corrupted or distracted by mercenary concerns. We put teachers, clergy, police, military personnel and nurses in this special, low-paying category.
Once upon a time, physicians, lawyers, judges and politicians also viewed themselves as professionals similarly called into a “vocation.” Now these people generally want to be paid whatever the private sector “market” will bear.
For instance, here in California our schools are badly under-funded. But teachers are told to rededicate themselves, to redouble their efforts, without expecting extra pay. Extra money, the paid pundits say, will not produce better schools.
Meanwhile, University of California President David P. Gardner commands a state salary of $307,900. He enjoys a benefits package that is worth about $70,000. And he has a housing allowance. And a maid. And a limo with a chauffeur. And we taxpayers pay his club dues. We give him extra “entertainment” funds. All this at a time when the UC system has been forced to cut its budget by $300 million and to raise student fees by 40%.
Gardner responds to criticism by claiming that his job is “complex” and that California must pay him buckets of money because market forces might woo him into the private sector. So much for education as a higher calling.
Acute discrepancies between high and low-wage schedules exist in other fields. In health care, nurses are expected to conform to the Florence Nightingale model of selfless devotion, while physicians, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies extract prices that border on bodily extortion.
But how long can this go on? How long can a truly democratic people wait for its legislatures to include a fair proportion of women and minorities? How many years must we wait before our board rooms, supreme courts and executive branches are no longer routinely dominated by white men? How long before we take action inspired by these new popular uprisings? How long before these questions no longer seem preposterous?
We call this country “free,” but let’s face it: that ideal has become a living sham, a cruel hoax, for many, many Americans--even if a majority still clings to that wonderful myth. But the hypocrisies of the system are becoming hard to ignore. The majority of Americans are now working for chump change, while hucksters and scam-artists in many former “vocations” ply the market for all that it’s worth.
Perhaps our own historical drama has yet to unfold in these unprecedented days of democratic reckoning.
