How Corporate America Is Turning Me Into A Socialist
Let me start by saying I most definitely do not approve of shooting people you disagree with, quite possibly because – as the last election demonstrated – 77,237,942 people disagree with me about who should be president and I’m pretty sure about 77,237,941 of them own a gun.
Having said that…
(And Larry David once used a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode to explore all the batshit crazy things you’ll hear immediately after someone starts a sentence with, “Having said that…” so buckle up.)
I was reading a New York Times News Service story about business executives being “on edge” after the shooting of Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO, and they talked to some still-living CEOs about it and one of them said his wife asked him:
“Why would someone kill a CEO?”
Which ranks right up there with Marie Antoinette’s comment about peasants and their dietary habits for cluelessness.
Once again: I do not approve of nor endorse shooting people or celebrate those who do, but…
According to the AI Robot that now answers question for Google, from 1978 to 2023 CEO compensation rose 1,085% while worker compensation rose just 24% and in 2023 the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 268-to-1 which assumes you could still find a job after all the Greedy CEOs fired as many employees as possible.
And here’s why a Greedy CEO might want to do that:
CEOs are often given stock options as part of their compensation which means the CEO has the “option” to buy a certain amount of stock at a predetermined price; so if the stock price goes down the CEO doesn’t exercise his option, but if he can drive the stock price up, he can make a bundle. And one of the ways a CEO can drive the stock price up is by firing a bunch of his employees which, for some reason, stock market speculators tend to view as the first step toward Happy Days Being Here Again.
“Good news! We just fired a bunch of those whiney-ass people we were paying!”
This would seem to be a short-sighted approach because it assumes those fired employees weren’t actually doing anything and their absence won’t eventually have a negative effect on their company’s product, but when it comes to making money, people can get a bit short-sighted (which explains convenience store robberies and cryptocurrency) and once the company fires all those employees so their already well-off executives with stock options can make even more money, the company starts issuing unreasonable demands like asking surviving employees to do two jobs and then three jobs and, once they get this AI crap off the ground, it’ll be no jobs.
So looks like they caught the guy who shot Brian Thompson and turns out the shooter was a high school valedictorian with back problems (I’m guessing we’ll hear a lot more about that in the near future) who also had some gripes with Corporate America and when he was caught, had a hand-written, 3-page document which included the line:
“I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
ONE MORE TIME JUST IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION:
I do not endorse shooting people, but to act perplexed about why anyone would get angry and want to shoot a CEO who had a compensation package of $10.2 million last year while his company denied 1-in-3 claims (the most of any major insurer and about twice the industry average of 16%) is disingenuous or, at the very least, naïve.
A number of people expressed surprise and disgust that some people on social media were rooting for the shooter and while it’s definitely wrong, I also find it understandable.
Because of Things Like This…
According to a CBS story, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield had a new policy set to go into effect next February; they had estimates of how long certain surgical procedures lasted on average and if your surgical procedure took more time than their bean counters estimated it should, they weren’t going to pay for the extra anesthesia.
Now here’s the problem with “averages.”
Some people (and right here I’m thinking of baseball analytics advocates) act like averages apply all the time in every situation, when in reality the numbers can be all over the place and it’s theoretically possible that a hundred examples of how long a surgical procedure lasted could average 45 minutes when not one of those examples actually took 45 minutes.
When people found out what Anthem was planning, they went justifiably batshit, so Anthem backed off and then acted like their proposal had been misunderstood and issued this statement:
“To be clear, it never was and never will be the policy of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield to not pay for medically necessary anesthesia services.”
Actually…it sounds like that’s exactly what they planned on doing, but got caught doing it before they could get it done, so it’s like catching four guys with ski masks, shotguns and a getaway car idling outside a bank and them asking what in the world would ever make you think they were planning a robbery?
Anthem’s proposed policy got the medical community worked up and Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy called their proposal “appalling” and anytime you can appall politicians – who general speaking have the same set of moral concerns as a school of hungry piranha – you may have gone a little (or in this case, a lot) too far.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-coverage-policy/
The Insurance Industry in General
So I’m watching Monday Night Football and these days you can’t watch TV for any length of time without getting overly familiar with the Aflac duck, the Geico gecko, Jake from State Farm, the gang of goofballs that work for Progressive Insurance or the psychopath who has partnered with an emu to sell Liberty Insurance and it occurred to me that the Insurance Industry is a lot better at selling insurance than they are at providing insurance.
That pessimistic thought resulted in the cartoon you just looked at.
Pay thousands and thousands of dollars for years and years so you have insurance and then let someone bang into your car because they were looking at their cell phone instead of the red light they just ran, and don’t be surprised if your insurance agent advises against filing a claim because then your insurance company – which hasn’t done jack shit for you in the past decade except cash your checks in a timely fashion – will have no choice but to raise your rates.
And have more than one idiot (and being 21st Century America, there’s an endless supply of them) bang into your car and your insurance company might drop you because you’re a bad risk. It’s like playing 21 in a casino that only allows you to lose and come to think of it, that’s the actual policy of every casino which is why I’ve never placed a bet in one despite growing up 90 minutes from Lake Tahoe.
According to the internet, U.S. Commercial Gaming made a record $66.5 billion last year so I don’t like my chances of beating those odds, but if you think you have developed a “system” that will make you rich, they’ll be happy to have your business unless your system actually works and then they’ll have two thugs break the leg of your choice and throw you in a dumpster.
And speaking of record profits, according to Google, in 2023 the property and casualty insurance injury had record profits, $88 billion, which is twice what they made in 2022 and just in case you’re not already sufficiently pissed off, here’s an article from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association that says the Insurance Industry is making record profits while crying poverty and raising rates:
https://iltla.com/?pg=Blog&blAction=showEntry&blogEntry=109107
And here’s a column from the Pennsylvania Capital Star about insurance companies fucking over their customers to keep their profits high:
Just in case you’re wondering just who and what the Pennsylvania Capital-Star is, their “About” section says it’s “a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site dedicated to honest and relentless coverage of state government, politics and policy” and if they keep that up I’m guessing they’ll soon be out of business because the Real Elites won’t like it.
Identifying The Real Elites
According to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel editorial that ran in the Kansas City Star, a lot of people who voted on November 5th were angry at the “elites” (college educated liberals who drink imported beer, keep their pinkies in the air while doing so and feel morally superior because they use pronouns like “they” when they’re talking about one person) but the people at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel think the Real Elites don’t give a flying fuck about social issues.
They keep the rest of us worked up and at each other’s throat with non-issues like transgender athletes (according to Saint Louis University research, there aren’t enough transgender athletes in Missouri to hold a pickup basketball game) while the Real Elites focus on what matters to them.
And what matters to them is money.
The Real Elites think donating some of theirs to politicians is a good investment because then those politicians (and if you want to cover your bets, donate to both sides) will watch out for their interests like making sure the minimum wage stays at $7.25 an hour, a rate of compensation that was set 15 years ago. Which is one of the many reasons the average person is scuffling and angry and you’d think the politicians would raise the minimum wage already, but the elites who finance their political campaigns won’t stand for it.
You’d also think someone could get elected by promising to do something about healthcare or out-of-control pay inequality, but then that candidate’s name would be Bernie Sanders and the Real Elites would make sure to scare the shit out of the Americans they’re fucking over, because a vote for Bernie would be a vote for “socialism” and frankly, the way “capitalism” is currently going I wouldn’t mind giving it a shot.
Today’s Lesson
DO NOT – I REPEAT – DO NOT SHOOT PEOPLE YOU DISAGREE WITH, ESPECIALLY IF THIS ESSAY PISSED YOU OFF.
But if you’re shocked that someone would be moved to violence by the greedy tactics of Corporate America that does everything it can to make people feel helpless in an unfair system, you haven’t been paying attention.
It’s all fine and dandy as long as we’re just killing each other. But people seem to get riled in a whole new way when it’s one of our oligarchs.
Lee, I could not, and I repeat, I COULD NOT agree with you more. I also feel like I have become a socialist.