Have you received your trickle yet?

The AFL-CIO provides us with a list of the highest-paid CEOs.

Now, I love the traditional Coach handbag. I have exactly TWO indulgences: I have my hair professionally colored by a hairdresser who gives me a price break because I've been going to him since 1986; and I carry the old-fashioned saddle-leather Coach bag. They wear like iron, and unlike most women, I don't like switching handbags to match every outfit. I mean, when you're pushing 50, and everything you wear looks pretty much the same, what's the point? Besides, with a wallet, checkbook, three eyeglass cases, a cell phone, and various and sundry allergy-related products, what a pain in the ass that would be.

But for all that I love my Coach bag, can someone please tell me why Coach CEO Lew Frankfort is the THIRD highest paid CEO in the country at $64,918,520 for 2004, with this on top of $84,119,694 in stock option exercises and another $54,748,258 in unexercised stock options from previous years?

The average CEO in this country received a 12.6% pay increase last year over 2004. The average worker received an average 3.6% increase.

When all this money is being funnelled into CEO pay, it's money that doesn't go into research and development. It's money that doesn't go into shareholder dividends. It's money that doesn't go into employee retirement plans. It's money that gets pocketed or spent on expensive imported products, à la Dennis Kozlowski.

Last year he top three executives at Viacom, Sumner Redstone, Leslie Moonves, and Tom Freston, each received total compensation last year valued at about $52 million to $56 million in salary, bonus and stock options -- despite Viacom's 18% drop in share price. Here's the "reward" in the form of bonus that these guys for their stellar performance: Redstone received a bonus of $16.5 million, Freston got $16 million and Moonves walked away with a cool $14 million...and that's just their bonuses. Hey, I'll do a shitty job of running a company for half of that!

And Administration policy towards these guys is "They don't have enough money. Let's give them another big tax cut and cut education, food for the poor, and health care some more."

All those Wal-Mart shoppers who voted Republican last year were voting for people who are looking out for these guys, NOT for them. And no, the playing field is NOT even. Your average blue-collar worker or technical professional, whose job is in danger of going overseas (even Starbucks baristas are being replaced now by machines -- another entry-level job shot to hell), and who shops at Wal-Mart because he gets more for his ever-shrinking dollar, is NEVER going to play in this league. And yet he votes as if he will.

Does anyone actually believe that the top 50 rich guys in the country can keep the economy humming when everyone else is in an ever-accelerating race to the bottom?

This is just insane.

(Hat tip: Corrente)