The pay of the chief executives of the 500 largest companies in the United States rose 16 percent in 2011, while the average worker’s pay rose less than 3 percent, and millions of people lost their jobs. The worker’s rate of increase is not even enough to keep up with inflation. From June 2010 to June 2011 alone, consumer prices rose 3.6 percent.
The rich are portrayed as hard-working people who have managed to make huge amounts of money, far more than the majority of other people, whether through luck or genius or their work ethic. This is an outright lie.
Individuals do not amass extreme wealth because they work hard or are geniuses. They do so by their position in a system—the capitalist system—that generates wealth through the exploitation of people’s labor and natural resources.
In 2011,five white men—chief executives of energy, real estate, pharmaceutical, military technology and clothing companies—were awarded the posts of highest-paid CEOs in the United States.
Number 5: David Cote
The lowest paid of these was David Cote. His compensation was $55.8 million last year. Cote has been the chairman and CEO of Honeywell International—a technology and manufacturing company—for over a decade. He is a member of the JP Morgan Chase Board of Directors, an advisor to Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts and Co.—a global investment firm—and an Obama-appointee to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Honeywell makes a slew of consumer products but its most nefarious products bring in profits straight from the U.S. capitalist war machine. Honeywell runs the Pantex plant that assembles all the nuclear bombs in the United States. The company first began profiting off war during WWII, producing aerospace elements. During and after the Vietnam War, Honeywell produced a number of war products, including cluster bombs, missile guidance systems, land mines and napalm.
Number 4: Richard Kinder
The fourth highest paid CEO, Richard Kinder, received $60.9 million in compensation last year. His actual salary is technically $1, but compensation was received from stock gains. He is the chairman and CEO of Kinder Morgan, one of the largest pipeline transportation and energy storage companies in the United States. Before joining Bill Morgan to establish Kinder Morgan, Kinder was a long-time executive at Enron and left shortly before their criminal practices came to light.
Kinder Morgan owns or operates 26,000 miles of pipelines that transport petroleum products and natural gas as well as 170 terminals that store gasoline, coal and petroleum coke. The company also produces 55,000 barrels of oil a day at two Texas oil fields.
Number 3: Michael Fascitelli
The third highest paid CEO is Michael Fascitelli, the CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, who received $64.4 million in compensation last year. Fascitelli was a long-time executive at Goldman Sachs before being lured to VRT with a $50 million package in 1996. VRT controls more than $20 billion in assets, most of which is in commercial and residential real estate in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago and parts of Virginia, New Jersey, and North Carolina.
Number 2: Ralph Lauren
The second highest paid CEO is Ralph Lauren with compensation of $66.7 million. Ralph Lauren is the founder and CEO of Polo Ralph Lauren. The brand produces clothing, accessories, perfume, household goods and owns a restaurant in New York. They operate or license over 300 stores worldwide. Ralph Lauren is one of the largest U.S. retailers.
Number 1: John Hammergren
The top paid CEO is John Hammergren of McKesson, a major pharmaceuticals and medical technology company. McKesson is the largest pharmaceutical company in the world, pulling in $112 billion in sales in 2011, and the 15th largest company in the United States. Hammergren’s compensation in 2011 totaled $131.2 million. He has twice been named to Modern Healthcare’s 100 most powerful people in health care.
These particular five people are not necessarily important as individuals. They have received great personal wealth—and continue to do so yearly—as a recognition of their ability to chase down an increasing rate of profit at whatever cost. In the case of Richard Kinder, for example, this meant shaving coststhrough layoffs and restructuring.
Each one serves as the chief executive of a company that makes its profits directly from the exploitation of people and the continuation of oppression in a capitalist system rife with contradictions.
McKesson—and Hammergren himself—profit off the commodification of health care. Billions of dollars are generated by the private corporate health industry that regularly denies coverage and maintains exorbitant prices for life-saving medicines and medical technology.
Lauren has made billions from an industry that objectifies and sexualizes women.
Fascitelli—and VRT, like other real estate investment firms—generates profits through real estate schemes and landlordship. Landlords do nothing more than privately own land which in the capitalist system gives them inordinate rights to profit off of people’s need to be housed.
Honeywell profits from the expansion and continuation of war and imperialist threats against the people of the world—and has for decades. It is an integral part of the military industrial complex.
It is high time that the working class unseat these ruling-class parasites and others like them, and build a society free from exploitation and oppression.
