-Caveat Lector-
William Hugh Tunstall wrote:
-Caveat Lector-
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Citation: The Nation April 8 1996, v262, n14, p3(1)
Title: Class act.(comments by Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer Robert Eaton of Chrysler Corp.)(Editorial)
COPYRIGHT The Nation Company Inc. 1996
Comes now Robert Eaton, chairman and C.E.O. of Chrysler, to decry the
"demonization of corporate America" before an appreciative bevy of execs at
the Detroit Economic Club. "Empty-headed, tub-thumping populism," complains
Eaton, has declared "open season" on virtuous C.E.O.s. He is particularly
aggrieved at stories on corporate downsizing in Newsweek, Business Week and
The New York Times. His mother used to be proud that her son was a "big shot."
Now she tells friends her son has a "front office job." "Demagogues," warned
Eaton, are herding us "down the path to class warfare."
Class warfare is one of the few things the elites are truly afraid of.
CEO's
would like to believe that they have successfully brainrinsed the
public into
thinking that they, the public, could also get some privileges like
the wealthy
class does. This works on Libertarians, Objectivists, Yuppies, and the
desperately greedy. But alas, most people have grudgingly concluded
that they
will not achieve great wealth and power due to social, and personal
reasons. It
is the increase in the numbers of these people who are becoming
receptive to
the idea of class war.
The elites can not win a class war. They know history.
EAT THE RICH
Joshua2
Really? For more than twenty years, the overclass that Eaton represents has
waged unrelenting class war on working people. Workers, wages have fallen in
recessions and in recoveries. Productivity has gone up, profits are at record
heights, but wages continue to fall. Profitable companies continue to lay
offworkers. Middle-aged workers are now twice as likely to be permanently
separated from an employer than they were two decades ago. Too often, the
result is not bruised feelings at the ski chalet, but dashed hopes, lost homes
and broken families.
Eaton made $6.2 million in 1994. Twenty years ago, C.E.O.s at large
companies were paid about 35 times the pay of the average U.S. worker. Today,
that ratio has exploded to 187 times as much. In Germany and Japan the
comparable ratio is 21 and 16, respectively. No other industrialized nation
has witnessed either the decline of wages suffered by America's working people
or the soaring of its executives, pay. No other country suffers the extreme
inequality now found in the United States. That, Mr. Eaton, is class warfare.
Americans, Eaton allows, do have "rational fears about holding on to a good
job if they have one, and getting one if they don,t," but don,t blame
C.E.O.s-rapacious shareholders make us do it. Shareholding, Eaton notes, is
increasingly dominated by institutional investors--mutual funds and pension
funds that demand short-term returns. In this "equalitarian" securities
market, Eaton reassured his audience, the new ownership of corporate America
is "most of America," which should "burst the bluster of the
redistribution-of-wealth crowd." Well, not exactly. Federal Reserve data show
that in 1989 the top 10 percent of Americans controlled 80 percent of the
financial assets of the country. Since then stocks have nearly doubled in
value and made the top 10 percenters seriously rich.
Eaton argues that the business of business is to make money. Profitable
companies like Chrysler compete, hire and pay workers and serve their
communities. But Chrysler survives today because the government--industrial
policy]--bailed it out when it was facing bankruptcy. Reagan's quotas on
Japanese auto imports--protectionism]--allowed the auto industry to revive.
Chrysler's workers have decent pay, pensions, health care and profit-sharing
plans not because of Eaton's benevolence but because they are represented by
the United Auto Workers--unions]--which exacted these benefits. If the 89
percent of the private work force that is not organized had similar union
representation, then declining wages in the midst of rising productivity would
be less of an issue. And that, Mr. Eaton, is class warfare.
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