Business Just As Before

In the United States unemployment is now around double what it was in the pre-recession of 2007; about one in seven Americans rely on food stamps; and the poverty rate is the highest it’s been since 1994. But CEOs at the nation's largest companies were paid better last year than they were in 2007.

Standard & Poor's released its list of the 500 highest-paid CEOs in 2010. The typical pay package for the head of a company was $9 million. That was 24 percent higher than a year earlier, reversing two years of declines. Executives were showered with more pay of all types — salaries, bonuses, stock, options and perks. The biggest gains came in cash bonuses: Two-thirds of executives got a bigger one than they had in 2009, some more than three times as big. Corporate profits soared in 2010 as the economy gradually got stronger and companies continued to cut costs. Profit for the companies in the AP analysis rose 41 percent last year. The stock market also continued its climb. Stocks rose 13 percent in 2010 and have now almost doubled since March 2009.

The highest-paid CEO in 2010 was Philippe Dauman of Viacom, the entertainment company that owns MTV and Paramount Pictures. Dauman received a package valued at $84.5 million. At number two, Ray Irani, Occidental Petroleum, $76.1 million and at third, Leslie Moonves, CBS, $56.9 million.

Meanwhile, pay for workers grew 3 percent in 2010, to an average of about $40,500. The average wage was less than one-half of one percent of what the typical CEO in the AP analysis made.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said last month:
"Despite the collapse of the financial market at the hands of executives less than three years ago, the disparity between CEO and workers' pay has continued to grow to levels that are simply stunning."

AFL-CIO's own database, Executive Pay Watch, showed that 299 CEOs made a collective $3.4 billion. And that could support 103,000 workers making average wages.

For the rich it's as if the recession never happened.

The United States is now about as economically unequal as Uganda and more unequal than countries like Pakistan or the Ivory Coast.