Screwed Over

By Nicholas Menapace

It’s a sad time for America now, the economy is poor and everyone is suffering. The unemployment rate is at 5.1% and likely to go up; people are losing their homes and gas prices are soaring at over $100 a barrel. The average American is suffering economically and companies have told their employees that they will stop all employee raises. You might be thinking, “Oh well, those companies are struggling to and they just can’t afford it”, but if that is so, why is American Airlines, who supposedly needs to cut wages and increase flight costs, paying their CEO not just his normal over a half a million-dollar salary, but also $6.6 million in a 2007 bonus. In fact American Airlines gave $250 million in stock bonuses to its executives and managers at the same time as it said it needed to halt pay raises for its employees. This is not unique to the American corporate world; the average CEO makes over 500 times what its average employee makes. In contrast, in places like Japan a CEO makes about seventeen times what an employee makes.

Why do Americans defend this system, all it has done is kept these CEO’s and corporate executives rich and actually keeps making them richer even when their companies fail. Our system has been rather quickly destroying the middle class, yet we sit here and let these Robber Barons screw Americans over by simply moving their jobs oversees and then promptly screwing over the workers in those countries by paying them almost nothing. On top of that many of these companies essentially do not have to pay taxes and many times the government actually gives direct money to these companies such as in 2001 when George W. Bush gave $15 billion dollars of tax payer money to the airline industry. Since the 1980’s its been free game on screwing over the worker since the great Ronald Reagan gave the go ahead for companies bust unions, ignore labor laws, and at the same time bring in government aid. Why is this okay with the American public that the top 1% of Americans own 60% of the wealth yet most Americans would tell you we don’t have a class system. Are we really indoctrinated enough that we don’t see ourselves being screwed over?