By Ralph De La Cruz
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Just in case you missed it …
USA Today reported that CEO compensation went up 27 percent last year.
Twenty-seven percent. At a time when most other folks are going on year two, three or four without a raise — and feeling lucky just to have a job.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports that The American Worker — the overworked, scared, freaked-out, stressed, traumatized American Worker — is pushing so hard to keep a job that productivity is sky-high.
American Workers are producing just three percent less now than when The Great Recession started, despite 9 million fewer people in the workplace. And those workers are getting 10 percent fewer hours.
They’re producing so well, that … companies are actually hesitant to hire people back.
After all, with fewer people working fewer hours and doing about as much work, profits can really roll in.
And CEOs can make even more obscene amounts of money.
Ohhh-kay.
And the Florida governor and legislature are destroying our public school system to cut one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the country so the state can be even “more business friendly?”
The Orlando Sentinel reports (emphasis mine):
Florida’s current corporate-tax rate of 5.5 percent is already near the bottom among states with flat rates, which range from 4.6 percent to 9.9 percent. The tax now funds education and other services, generating about $2 billion a year in revenue for a state currently facing a $3 billion budgetary shortfall.
Of the 32 states with flat rates, only five have rates lower than Florida’s: South Carolina, Utah, Michigan, Colorado and Ohio. Those states combined are home to 52 headquarters for companies on the Fortune 500 list of largest U.S. corporations. The five states with the highest tax rates — Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California — are home to more than 120 Fortune 500 headquarters.
Maybe there should be as much focus on making the state more friendly for workers. After all, they’re the ones making the money for everyone.
Instead, our state braintrust is doing everything possible to make it downright intolerable for workers by attacking unions, public employees and those horrible, evil, no-good teachers, who are suddenly responsible for all that’s wrong in the Sunshine State.
If they have any concern whatsoever for the future of the state, Florida lawmakers might want to look at what’s happening across the pond.
England’s fragile economic rebound is being threatened as a result of falling retail business. Business is falling because of — listen up, all you kids in Tallahassee — government cutbacks.
Seems public-sector workers are hesitant to buy those nice big-screen TVs and luxurious furnishings because, for some reason, they’re worried about … losing their jobs.
Go figure.
So what are businesses planning to do?
Cut more jobs.
Hey, have to keep profits up to be able to pay those CEO salaries.
Everybody except tea partiers notice a trend here?
Now, if you want to get a real fright, check out this interview of the tea party governor, Rick Scott, by Bloomberg News’ Betty Liu. Go to the 1:22 mark. (Video below.)
Liu: “Some have said that your proposal, I think you calculate, will include a loss of about 9,000 government jobs. How do you plan on off-setting that?”
Scott: “Because I’m relying on the private sector.”
And the result so far?
While the national unemployment rate has dropped to 8.8 percent, Florida’s rate remains the third-worst in the country at 11.5 percent.
And that’s before the 9,000 jobs Scott is so anxious to jettison.
Rickonomics at its best.