Rating agencydowngradeS U.S. credit rating to AA+

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http://dangerousintersection.org/200...-polarization/

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‘To see how different labor relations were under the Treaty of Detroit from their state today, compare two iconic corporations, one of the past, one of the present. In the final years of the postwar boom General Motors was America’s largest private employer aside from the regulated telephone monopoly. Its CEO was, correspondingly, among America’s highest paid executives: Charles Johnson’s 1969 salary was $795,000, about $4.3 million in today’s dollars – and that salary excited considerable comment. But ordinary GM workers were also paid well. In 1969 auto industry production workers earned on average almost $9,000, the equivalent of more than $40,000 today. GM workers, who also received excellent health and retirement benefits, were considered solidly in the middle class. Today Wal-Mart is America’s largest corporation, with 800,000 employees. In 2005 Lee Scott, its chairman, was paid almost $2 million. That’s more than five times Charles Johnson’s inflation-adjusted salary, but Mr. Scott’s compensation excited relatively little comment, since [sic] wasn’t exceptional for the CEO of a large corporation these days. The wages paid to Wal-Mart’s workers, on the other hand, do attract attention, because they are low even by current standards. On average Wal-Mart’s nonsupervisory employees are paid about $18,000 a year, less than half what GM workers were paid thirty-five years ago, adjusted for inflation. Wal-Mart is also notorious both for the low percentage of its workers who receive health benefits, and the stinginess of those scarce benefits.’ (139-140) The Conscience of a Liberal, by Paul Krugman

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