Vote NDP please.

no matter the candidate, eh.

the receipe

Take the information in this article; add it together with a populace who tend to want to continue to enjoy relatively peaceful lives (in comparison to escalating rebellion, protest, violence, etc.); and who have gotten used to politicians who frequently lie, deny, obfuscate, and manipulate; and one realizes “capitalism” will continue to get worse until something breaks.

All NDP leadership

All NDP leadership candidates need to read this article - perhaps it will help them understand why so many members and supporters object to them kissing up to these greedy and power hungry CEOs.
You cannot be their friend and still represent the general public in any meaningful way. These people are not about to change course nor change a single policy in order to make us happy - only by giving them exactly what they want can you avoid their enmity!

Let's not forget that the

Let's not forget that the responsibility for this and all the earth's other crime waves lies on the shoulders of our universities, where...

...the legal eagles refuse to admit that theft is a theft no matter who does it.

.... the physicists and mathematicians who can send satellites to planets and calculate events light years away, but can not comprehend that the present economic system is a fraud.

.... the medical departments who beg for donations for "cures", but refuse to admit the real causes of illnesses that existed only fractionally only a generation ago, now killing millions.

.... the economics departments....well don't even bother with them. Too stupid even to add 2 +2 = ???? "Well, it could be $9.6 withincreased GDP and productivity"

.... the science departments where the inventors of more chemicals in the air, GM foods and tar sands developments are spewed forth..

Shall we go on from department to department and ask them : What the hell is the matter with your goddamn brains, unless you're planning to join the pirate gangs by blocking out realities ?

Ed Deak.

Better than a pyramid scheme!

Just like governments who say they manage the economy; CEO's do what exactly?

Nothing to see here folks.

So the far left, union backed Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives doesn't like it that big corporate CEO's make big bucks. If stockholders are OK with this, why should we care? Salaries for publicly listed companies are readily available. If you feel that strongly about it, don't deal with the companies that you think overcompensate their executives.

Here's a company that might meet their approval. Walmart not only DOESN'T have corporate jets, it makes its executives fly coach. But Walmart is non-union. That would never do.

Just the same tired old class warfare nonsense that the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives tries to stir up from time to time. Nothing to see here folks.

Regardless who does it,

Regardless who does it, those salaries and the jets, or coach flights, are still coming out from the public's pockets.

Everybody's bitching about taxation, but not against the taxation by profits.

At least with taxation we can demand a little accountability and something in return in services, but not for the monies stolen from our pockets by the corporate crooks in the name of profits.

As a life long private enterpriser and business owner, I understand the need for profits, but not the present unlimited legalized theft from the public's pockets.

There was a time when these crooks would have had to pay 90% in taxes, but now they can get away with murder, tax free, and with the collectivization and destruction of real private enterprise we can see all around us.

Ed Deak.

Sooke, why did you label

Sooke, why did you label CCPA as "far" left? Now we know who pays their bills and they look at an issue differently than, let's say, the Fraser Institute. You just showed that you won't look at a message cuz you put a label on the messenger. How about if I put a label on you? "Sooke is a radical religious right-wing rabble-rouser". I really don't think you are in what I described but I hope you get my drift.

Example

Telus CEO, Darren Entwhistle, at the same time he was breaking the Telecommunications Workers Union, [EDITED FOR LACK OF VERIFICATION -- BOOKER, CAN YOU PROVIDE A LINK TO BACK THIS UP? THANKS. -MODERATOR.]. Tony Soprano would be envious.

And "Tony Soprano's" is what these CEOs are. They're a syndicate. They buy politicians. They lawyer up. They threaten and intimidate. They fix the game.

CEO's are the bullies of the Corportate World

and why we will never rid ourselves of bullying - there's money to be made (squashed under expensive Italian shoes), and I'll do what it takes to get it!

From His Highness the Aga Khan

From His Highness the Aga Khan
The Centre plans, of course, to engage expert researchers to help in its work. Those plans remind me of a “think-tank” executive who found himself floating aimlessly across the sky one day in a hot air balloon. (I suspect he was the chairman!). As he hovered above he called down to a man below, “Can you tell me where I am?” The man shouted back, giving him his longitude, latitude and altitude. “Thanks,” said the chairman, “that’s interesting, but you must be a professor!” “Why do you say that?” asked the man below. “Well,” the chairman responded, “you have given me a lot of precise information, which I’m sure is technically correct, but which is not of the faintest use to me.”

The man below replied, “And you must be an executive. “How did you know?” asked the balloonist. “Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are - or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are on a lot of hot air. And you expect people beneath you to solve your problems!”

Those same executives would

Those same executives would be party cadres and politbureau members under communism, with our "conservatives" the biggest red flag wavers, and Harper the Chief of the Secret Police, with the biggest red star on his cap. I have seen those eyes under Totenkopf and red star caps and they always give me the creeps.

I've seen them all and always have to laugh when people talk rubbish about "right" and "left" wings.

There are only the predators who come out on top under every system, always licenced by religions and ideologies to commit their crimes, and their faithful victims who believe they must follow, because "it is written", and obeying will bring them "prosperity" and "everlasting life".

Ed Deak.

Corporations run it all (with the banks)

Corporations owning North America, yet another violation of our rights. Add it to the list of gov’t violations of our right:
They violate the 1st Amendment by placing protesters in cages, banning books like “America Deceived II” and censoring the internet.
They violate the 2nd Amendment by confiscating guns.
They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by molesting airline passengers.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars for foreign countries.
Impeach Obama and sweep out the Congress, except Ron Paul.
(Last link of Banned Book):
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526

Wasn't it just last year........

.....that the average CEO remuneration was what the average worker made in a day-and-a-half? Now it's 3 days?? Does that mean our CEOs have taken a 50% cut? Or is that we average workers are far better off than we are aware.....?? :~)

Were it all began.

Anyone interested in this story will probably want to read the following story that traces the origins of modern crazy salaries.

It covers Marvin Miller and his negotiation skills learned at, among other places, the United Steelworkers Union.

It's worth a read.

https://media.scoopreprintsource.com/CondeNast/5618CN_FLIntlUnv_050310.pdf

greed

I believe that when the snott hits the fan many of these people will find themselves in dire straights to say the least and they will no longer have corrupt police, govts, and unjust laws to protect them. Every night millions of children go to bed hungry and these people care about nothing other than the hundred thousand dollar birthday party for their kids 16th birthday or bar mitzva. Or maybe a new Jag

Corporate Feudalism

Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation) observed that all systems of government finally reduce to an oligarchy whose self interest drives public policy, and these highly paid CEOs do comprise an oligarchy.

We keep forgetting that these corporate CEOs are, by and large, employees of their corporations and therefore should behave like employees, and exercise the leadership skills required to ensure the long term health of their company is always their first concern.

I also recall from my days as a student that Alfred Sloan had two rules only that guided his management philosophy:

1. The highest paid employess should be paid no more than 15 times the salary of the lowest paid employee, and

2. Vice-Presidents should be paid almost as much as the president, to avoid feuding over succession.

Yes, teamwork was the key at GM in the days of Alfred Sloan.

But, sadly, teamwork is also the key to the financial success of our current crop of CEOs.

Their boards are comprised colleagues with the same background, training and outlook as the CEOs whose salary they are deciding.

No wonder things are the way they are. For our capitalist system to survive and flourish, there need to be groundrules.

There is much evidence now at hand to prove that a self-regulated market system will not prevent unsustainable excesses occurring without financial collapse being the outcome.

The question we all need to ask ourselves is "Do we want to maintain a capitalist system that depends upon the probability of collapse being the sole means of regulation?"

Related topic

I'm half way through the 4-part CBC doczone documentary "Meltdown: The men who crashed the world". It's excellent...

http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/meltdown/

Source and structure as form and function

What qualifies one rather than another to be CEO? How does one get to be a CEO?

These things seem to me to be more akin to a religion or cult than to a legitimate social structure. In theory the purpose of a corporation is to produce something for which a need exists. If corporations as institutions had to argue for their survival, that is the nature of the argument they would have to make. They would need to say 'you need us to ------' Fill in the blanks yourselves.

This isn't very true anymore. Lots of corporations are just financial manipulators who take control of money, usually while it's moving, and grab off a bunch on the way by. banks and insurance companies fit this description more and more, preying on their customers far more that serving them.

You see the rise of individual managers to CEO resembling the rise of entertainers or preachers. They get big reputations as they come up, based on making some people spectacularly wealthy, far beyond any concept of earning, and then taking their own cut before moving on to the next movie or to the next tent .

They become stars because everybody knows that they can take whatever insiders can get them hired way beyond the dreams of Midas. What will then happen to whatever sector of the economy or of the community constitutes their particular stage or pulpit is not considered, not by them or by the insiders who hope to share the looting.

They have been so effective at conveying their dogma and inspiring willing suspension of disbelief among their audiences, that our governments have just recently paid out trillions to them for no reason anyone can state, and without any expectations of return.

Halleluia! Praise Jesus! Applause. Fade to black. Roll credits.

the real obscenity -

- is the amazing fraud that so few people seem to understand that underlies all of our problems - "we" allow private commercial banks to create our money out of thin air - and charge interest on that money! - everything else follows, from the massive government debt via which our governments have been slashing spending on things most Cdns want the last 30 years to the systemic inflation which is devalue-ing our money so that savings are lower and debt higher for average people than ever before. And nothing is going to improve until people start to understand this great fraud/scam and take back "their" democracy. More detail here for anyone ready to start the (democratic) revolution - What Happened? http://www.rudemacedon.ca/what-happened.html .

siamdave

That link at the bottom of your last post is invaluable to understanding what has happened to the Canada I knew growing up. I think also the anti-war movement of the late 60's early 70's scared the crap out of the governments and big business. They realized they had to stop the war and, to use a Palin euphanism, "reload". They then went after the workers protection, unions. Once they discredited them they went after benefits and now our Canada Pension Plan. They have got the American one now they're after ours. We will soon be serfs and that's the way they like it.

I received an email a while ago. It was exam from 1898, Math to be exact. I couldn't finish it. I know I'm not a genious but I did well in Math in high school. That exam prepared the student for the world. Now we prepare them for serfdom.

The money, "created" by the

The money, "created" by the private banks from the air, belongs to the government/public, by law.

As only a country, or similar political unit is legally permitted to create money, because money is, in effect, a debt against which a government must provide resources to ensure its convertibility and maintain its value .

The more money the banks create, the higher the debt load on the public they have to pay for in resources and growing enslavement and poverty.

The most idiotic part is when governments borrow and pay interest on monies they already own by law.

Only politicians and ideologues can be that stupid.

Ed Deak.

I think it was in the 80's.......

.......that we the people were told it was foolish to save our money, as it held back the economy.

Now we are being told that we have spent too much and should be saving.

Alistair Cooke authored a great 13 part series

back in 1972 called America: A personal History of the United States. It is available on youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqYq6WMw3Aw&feature=related

One remark he makes that is bang on:

I remarked, as if it were almost a permanent recipe for prosperity, tht America had learned to live by the credit card, by the mortgage, by the bank loan, by Roosevelt's system of deficit financing. Today whole nations live that way, and the word deficit carries far more ominous sound than it did.

He ends the show with a couple of quotes, but summarizes the matter like this:

Q: whether America is in its ascendent or in its decline?

I myself recognize several of the symptoms that Edward Gibbons saw so acutely in the decline of Rome which arise not from external enemies but from inside the country itself: a love of show and luxury; a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor; the exercise of military might in places remote from the centres of power; an obsession with sex; freakishness in the arts masquerading as originality and enthusiasm pretending to creativeness; and a general desire to live off the state whether its a junkie on welfare or a government subsidized airline. In a word the idea that Washington, Big Daddy, willl provide.

Yes, we are in our decline and the fallout from this arrogant behemoth cicling the planet, unwilling to let go, is NOT going to be pretty. And I prophesize without any special skill that we will do nothing to prevent it happening.

The Solution

The solution to this is simple - stop patronizing these companies. Bank with a local credit union. Do some serious research about ethical investing. Buy a used car or join a car share. Use U-brews for good beer and wine. Shop local businesses and craftspeople for gifts and for yourself. Buy used where appropriate. Use linux based operating systems on refurbished computers. The list literally goes on and on with little or no sacrifice of our standard of living. Shut the bast**ds out.