The $1.1 trillion in collective wealth hoarded by 25 people equals the combined annual wages of roughly 14.3 million American workers, who in 2018 paid $143 billion in federal taxes, or over 75 times more than the billionaires.
CEO pay surges amid mass death, stagnant wages and soaring inflation
Over the last year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 people in the United States, the highest death toll in the world. Approximately 400 people continue to die every day.
While the working class suffered its worst year in more than a century, the wealth of the ruling class soared to ever greater heights. The annus horribilis for the masses was an annus mirabilis for the rich. The COVID-19 death chart and wealth chart soared in tandem.
The New York Times published a report on Friday under the headline, “Meager Rewards for Workers, Exceptionally Rich Pay for CEOs.” The Times called 2020 a “blowout year” for executive pay based on a survey of the 200 highest-paid executives carried out by executive compensation consultant Equilar.
Eight CEOs, the highest number on record, each brought in more than $100 million in pay last year. Overall, pay for the 200 top CEOs rose 14.1 percent, compared to just 1.9 percent for the median worker. All told, CEOs were paid 274 times more than the median worker, up from 245 in 2019.
The top paid CEO was Alex Karp of analytics software company Palantir, a major government contractor, who received a payout of $1.1 billion, one of the largest pay packages in history. He was followed by Tony Xu of DoorDash, a food delivery app, who pulled in $414 million. And close behind was Eric Wu of OpenDoor, an online service which flips real estate, who received a compensation of $370 million.
While all three companies reported major losses last year, their lucrative CEO compensation packages were triggered by corporate stock performance and revenues. Despite a sharp decline in March last year as the pandemic began to be felt around the world, the stock market quickly reversed course and has hit record highs. Financial assets have been propped up by the corporate bailout in the CARES Act and the infusion of limitless cash by the Federal Reserve. The Dow Jones has risen by more than 50 percent since its lowest point last year.
After a year and a half of death and devastation, the pandemic profiteers have amassed wealth beyond imagination. The wealth controlled by the world’s billionaires exploded by 60 percent in the first year of the pandemic, rising from $8 trillion to $13.1 trillion.
Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is approaching a net worth of $200 billion dollars, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth more than double from $68 billion in September to $151 billion today.
Despite, or rather because of their massive piles of wealth, a recent report by ProPublica found that the top 25 billionaires in the US pay a lower tax rate than the average household. The super-rich paid just 3.4 percent in effective federal income taxes over the five years in which their collective wealth rose by $401 billion.
All of this is made possible by ongoing impoverishment of the population. As measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), inflation hit a 13-year high of 5 percent in May, meaning real wages have declined every month for the last year, driven by month-on-month price increases for basic commodities and consumer goods.
During the pandemic, millions were thrown out of work with only the most limited assistance while millions more lost hours and wages. The economic crisis that hit the working class has dwarfed the Great Recession of 2008 and is only comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. There were 7.6 million fewer jobs in May than in February 2020, before the pandemic’s impacts were felt in the economy.
Globally, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 345 million full-time jobs were lost globally due to the pandemic. The ILO notes in its global wage report for 2020 that without subsidies, the loss of wages would have been 6.5 percent. However, government assistance only compensated for 40 percent of losses. Workers all over the world have been set back significantly by the pandemic.
Amidst the mad rush to complete the full reopening of the US economy, with the dropping of all social distancing and masking requirements to push profits and CEO pay even higher into the stratosphere, more contagious and deadly variants of COVID-19 are circulating globally. With less than half of the US population fully vaccinated, conditions are set for a potential resurgence of the pandemic.
The pandemic is a “trigger event” that has exacerbated all the reactionary tendencies of capitalism. The monstrous rise of social inequality in the face of mass death combined with the rise of inflation and declining wages has primed the situation for a powerful offensive by the working class in the United States and internationally.
Already, thousands of workers have gone on strike at Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia and Warrior Met in Brookwood, Alabama in an effort to recoup years of lost wages. Steelworkers at ATI have been on strike for nearly three months, while 650 refinery workers have been locked out by ExxonMobil since May 1. In Sudbury, Canada, 2,600 miners are on strike against plans by Vale Inco to strip benefits from new hires.
The emergence of these militant struggles, which pit workers into ever more direct conflict with the corporatist trade unions, is only an initial expression of the massive social eruptions on the horizon.
If the past year and a half has demonstrated anything, it is that the interests of the vast majority of humanity are incompatible with the existence of a parasitic oligarchy and the social and economic system upon which this oligarchy rests. The combination of mass death and the accumulation of massive wealth demonstrates the necessity of the expropriation of the pandemic profiteers through the mobilization of the working class to take political power and abolish the capitalist system.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE PRECIOUS TO THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY THAN BANKSTERS WITH BRIBES AND BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS. THESE ARE THE CLOWNS WHO ELECT OUR WHITE-COLLAR CRIMINAL PRESIDENTS NOW!
IRS data shows: US billionaires’ true tax rate far lower than that of workers
On June 8, ProPublica published the first in a projected series of articles documenting the massive scale of legally sanctioned tax evasion carried out by America’s ever-expanding class of billionaires. The article, based on an exhaustive study of leaked Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents, focuses on the period from 2014 through 2018. It demonstrates that in the course of those five years, the 25 richest Americans paid federal taxes on their increased wealth at a far lower rate than the typical US household.
The report also cites tax data on billionaire oligarchs such as Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg going back to the first decade of the current century, showing that they paid little or no taxes regardless of which big business party—Democrats or Republicans—occupied the White House. It explains as well that even were the Biden administration to carry out its promised increases in income tax rates for the rich, the impact on the vast fortunes of today’s robber barons would be minimal.
The authors state that in determining the increased wealth of America’s “top 0.001 percent,” they included not simply their salaries, which in many cases comprise only a small share of their actual income, but also “investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.”
The result, they note, demolishes “the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most.” They continue: “The IRS records show that the wealthiest can—perfectly legally—pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.”
ProPublica’s revelations provide insight into how the capitalist system and its various state institutions and rigged legal system promote a parasitic financial aristocracy that lives in a world apart from the rest of humanity. Unlike workers, who depend on their wages to survive and pay the full income tax rate, the ultra-wealthy avoid taxes by obtaining massive loans from banks, borrowing against the value of their ever growing and artificially inflated assets, such as stocks and real estate, which are not taxable until they are sold.
In order to calculate what ProPublica terms the “true tax rate” of the 25 richest Americans, the report compares how much in taxes these individuals paid over a given period to how much their wealth grew, using wealth estimates published by Forbes magazine.
Between 2014 and 2018, Forbes estimated that these 25 people saw their wealth increase collectively by $401 billion. The documents obtained by ProPublica show that these same individuals collectively paid $13.6 billion in federal income taxes over the same time period, for a true tax rate of only 3.4 percent. By contrast, ProPublica found that between 2014 and 2018, a typical US worker in his or her 40s experienced a net wealth expansion of about $65,000. That same worker’s tax bills “were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.”
Over that same period, according to ProPublica, Warren Buffett’s wealth increased by $24.3 billion, but the Berkshire Hathaway mogul paid only $23.7 million in taxes, resulting in a true tax rate of 0.10 percent.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’ wealth soared by a staggering $99 billion, but he paid just $973 million in taxes, yielding a true tax rate of less than 1 percent.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is another “pandemic profiteer.” He saw his wealth skyrocket this past year, in part by violating a state-ordered shutdown and illegally restarting production at the Fremont, California, Tesla factory, leading to hundreds of coronavirus infections. Between 2014 and 2018 his wealth grew by $13.9 billion, while he paid $455 million in taxes, resulting in a true tax rate of 3.27 percent.
The reporting confirms the Marxist analysis of the capitalist state, described in the Communist Manifesto as “… a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” The various loopholes and tax avoidance schemes employed by the ruling class are legal, have been for decades, and will continue to be so under Biden or any other Democratic administration.
As then-candidate Joe Biden assured wealthy donors at a Manhattan campaign fundraising event in January 2019, should he become president, “no one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change.” Nearly six months into his presidency, Biden has kept his promises to his wealthy benefactors, as evinced by his recent retreat from his proposal to raise corporate taxes by a few percentage points.
Among other facts included in the ProPublica report:
- Bezos, the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011. In 2011, despite his overall wealth holding steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return in which he claimed to have lost money. The IRS not only approved the billionaire’s tax return, it granted him a $4,000 tax credit for his children!
- Musk, now the second richest person in the world, did not pay any federal income taxes in 2018.
- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as billionaire investors Carl Icahn and George Soros, have also had years when they paid nothing in federal income taxes. Soros, worth an estimated $8.6 billion as of March 2021, paid no federal income taxes for three years in a row.
According to the ProPublica report, when the super-rich do pay something in income taxes, their true tax rate is far lower than that of the typical working class household, with a median income of $70,000. For instance, between 2006 and 2018, while Bezos’ wealth surged by over $120 billion, he paid, on average, $1.09 in taxes for every $100 in wealth growth. But over the same period, the median American household paid $160 in taxes for every $100 in wealth growth—paying more in taxes than it gained in wealth.
Overall, ProPublica found that the richest 25 Americans pay a far lower income tax rate, an average of 15.8 percent of adjusted gross income, than do many workers, once taxes for Social Security and Medicare are included. To highlight the point, ProPublica found that by the end of 2018, the 25 richest Americans were worth $1.1 trillion and collectively paid a federal tax bill of $1.9 billion.
The $1.1 trillion in collective wealth hoarded by 25 people equals the combined annual wages of roughly 14.3 million American workers, who in 2018 paid $143 billion in federal taxes, or over 75 times more than the billionaires.
On Tuesday, in response to a reporter’s question about the ProPublica report, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had nothing to say about its damning content. Instead, she threatened criminal prosecution of those who leaked the IRS documents to ProPublica.
“Any unauthorized disclosure of confidential government information by a person of access is illegal and we take this very seriously,” said Psaki. She added that the IRS commissioner has referred the matter to investigators and that the FBI and Justice Department would also be investigating.
Facebook to Expand Remote Work to All Employees – But May Reduce Pay
Social media giant Facebook recently stated that it will let all employees work remotely even after the pandemic if their job can be performed out of the office. The company will consider reducing pay for employees that move to areas with lower cost of living than Silicon Valley.
Bloomberg reports that tech giant Facebook Inc. recently stated that it will let all employees work remotely even after the pandemic if their job can be done away from the office, but it will reduce their pay if they move to an area with a lower cost of living.
From June 15, any Facebook employee will be able to request to work from home, Facebook said in a statement. If those employees choose to move to a lower-cost region, their salaries will be adjusted accordingly and they will be encouraged to return to the office at times for team-building purposes.
Facebook stated that it will be more flexible for employees expected to return to the office. “Guidance is to be in the office at least half the time,” the company said. Facebook also plans to open most of its U.S.-based offices to at least 50 percent capacity by early September and aims to fully reopen in October.
Until the end of 2021, Facebook will allow employees to work as many as 20 business days from another location away from their home area, the company stated. Facebook has more than 60,000 workers according to regulatory filings published in March. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last year that he believes remote workers could make up as much as 50 percent of Facebook’s workforce in the next five to 10 years.
“As part of my commitment to remote and hybrid work, I plan to spend as much as half of the next year working remotely,” Zuckerberg told employees on Wednesday. “I’ve found that working remotely has given me more space for long-term thinking and helped me spend more time with my family, which has made me happier and more productive at work.
“I’ll be in the office a lot too, and I’m structuring my schedule to keep a good rhythm with our leadership team, as well as for planning and other key milestones,” Zuckerberg added. “I’m looking forward to getting to see a lot of you in our offices again soon.”
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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