Wiping the tears with $100 notes
I find it darkly amusing to see all the coverage "embattled" Merril Lynch CEO Stan O'Neil is getting. I'm not saying that the pieces are necessarily intended to elicit sympathy, but the focus on him gives it that tint to me... which is laughable considering what the man was paid in a single year.
Sure, if one subtracts the $26.8 million that were stock grants based on their market price at the time (why, the poor man could have seen the value of those drop to an abysmal $20 million!) that still leaves over $21 million... in a single year.
I know it's nothing new, but how obscene of a system is this? How many people will make $48 million over the course of their entire working life? Someone gets a single-year income like that and I'd support a law that says they have to retire, or at the very least a nearly loophole-free progressive tax system would have re-absorbed 70% or so of it into the national coffers. Taking 70% of $21 million would leave him with $6.3 million in a single year, which is already the stuff of fabulous dreams for over 99% of the rest of us.
Don't look at the inhuman mockery that is a CEO's compensation and at the money being poured into the pockets of GOP-connected contractors and general war profiteers in this Iraq debacle and tell me with a straight face that we can't have health and prescription coverage for every US citizen.
I find it darkly amusing to see all the coverage "embattled" Merril Lynch CEO Stan O'Neil is getting. I'm not saying that the pieces are necessarily intended to elicit sympathy, but the focus on him gives it that tint to me... which is laughable considering what the man was paid in a single year.
Sure, if one subtracts the $26.8 million that were stock grants based on their market price at the time (why, the poor man could have seen the value of those drop to an abysmal $20 million!) that still leaves over $21 million... in a single year.
I know it's nothing new, but how obscene of a system is this? How many people will make $48 million over the course of their entire working life? Someone gets a single-year income like that and I'd support a law that says they have to retire, or at the very least a nearly loophole-free progressive tax system would have re-absorbed 70% or so of it into the national coffers. Taking 70% of $21 million would leave him with $6.3 million in a single year, which is already the stuff of fabulous dreams for over 99% of the rest of us.
Don't look at the inhuman mockery that is a CEO's compensation and at the money being poured into the pockets of GOP-connected contractors and general war profiteers in this Iraq debacle and tell me with a straight face that we can't have health and prescription coverage for every US citizen.
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