Workers of the World, Ignite!

According to the following article from CNN, since 1978 CEO compensation among America’s 300 biggest companies has gone up 1,460% while the typical worker’s pay has gone up just 18%.

But wait, there’s more.

In 2008 the auto industry nearly collapsed so their workers agreed to freeze wages and give up some pension and health care benefits and as a result, when adjusted for inflation, their hourly earnings have fallen an average of 19%. So the workers took one for the team, but over the same time period Big 3 Automaker CEO compensation went up 40%.

So if you’re wondering where the United Auto Workers get the balls to ask for a 40% raise, there’s your answer; if the automobile industry is handing out 40% raises, their workers would like one.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra (and I’d be stunned if her employees don’t complete her last name by adding “cuda”) tried to defend herself by saying most of her compensation was tied to performance of the company, but as the CNN article points out, a CEO might get a performance bonus when the company hits a profit target – which The Barracuda did in 2021 – so a CEO can get more money for making sure the company workers get less money.

Mary Barracuda made almost $29 million in 2022, which according to NPR is 362 times the median salary of her employees.

All of which pissed off the UAW so they went on strike and semi-recently I read an article which quoted some car company flack saying the companies couldn’t afford their workers’ demands; a position that would be slightly more credible if the CEO of Ford – Jim Farley – didn’t receive $20,996,146 in total compensation last year.

Also according to the internet:

Farley’s base salary is $1.7 million so he can quote that number if he gets asked because it doesn’t sound nearly as greedy, but then the company piled on $15.1 million in stock awards (which is another reason CEOs are willing to fire workers at the drop of a hat…they need to keep their company stock valuable) and according to the following article, in 2021 the average compensation for the Big Three automaker CEOs was $24.4 million, which is higher than the average S&P 500 companies’ CEO compensation which was still a giant rip-off at $13.4 million. 

The CEO of Stellantis (which used to be Chrysler/Jeep) Carlos Tavares made $24.8 million last year.

So the workers see the people at the top raking it in with both hands and say if the company’s doing that great, how about sharing the wealth and the people at the top sitting on their huge pile of money say the company can’t afford it.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/18/business/ceo-pay-unions-strike/index.html#:

A system which is set up to reward CEOs for fucking over their workers is a system that’s bound to have trouble and now the automakers have it.

https://coopwb.in/info/ford-ceo-salary/

If you’re a parent you probably already know having kids can be the greatest thing ever because nobody will ever love you like they do (unless you adopt a dog, which is way cheaper unless Fido expects you to put him through college) but once those kids grow up you have to accept that they get to make their own choices and some of those choices might not be so great.

Timeout for some thoughts on Parenthood:

You can certainly try to keep telling your adult children what to do, but then you’re a pain-in-the-ass nag and your kids avoid spending time with you because they’ve had it up to here with all your advice, most of which you never followed yourself.

Having been raised by wolves (AKA: four brothers who went through life without much parental supervision, so if my mom tossed me a cookie I signaled for a fair catch) when I had kids I read some books on parenting and one of the best pieces of advice I read was this:

Your kids aren’t going to do what you tell them to do; they’re going to do what they see you do yourself which means my kids are going to spend way too much time watching baseball, but let’s face it, there are worse legacies. 

In any case…

Trying to control other people is usually a futile exercise unless you’re a dictator and even then you wind up shooting yourself and Eva Braun in a bunker.

In my personal opinion (and right about here I’m asking myself how the word “personal” improves that phrase) we spend way too much time trying to control others and way too little time controlling ourselves.

So whether we like it or not our kids are going to make decisions of their own and as the cartoon makes clear, some of those decisions might be embarrassing to a parent and if Joe is shaking his head over some of Hunter’s antics – as a reader pointed out – you gotta wonder how Fred Trump feels, assuming he feels anything because he died in 1999.

Although…

If you read about Fred he sounds like a huge dick (he ridiculed his kids and pitted them against each other) so maybe he’s OK with Donald’s current behavior and now I’m thinking back to that part about your kids doing what they see you do.

Apparently apples and assholes don’t fall far from the tree and if anybody decides to embroider that on a wall hanging, I’ll consider buying it.

The cartoon you just looked at was inspired by two things: a front-page photo of people standing on a beach in Massachusetts watching huge waves churned up by Atlantic storm Lee (apparently I wasn’t nearly as powerful as some people thought I would be and that includes my kids) and the photo cutline called those people “storm chasers.”

Which surprised me because in the past when people showed up to watch huge waves hit beaches and volcanoes spew out lava and tornadoes wreck trailer parks we used to call them by their traditional name: “morons.”

Call me insensitive (it doesn’t bother me because I can’t actually hear you) but when we lose people engaged in some less-than-brilliant activity like backing up one step too far so they can take a great selfie in front of the Grand Canyon I tend to think Natural Selection is still at work and we probably haven’t lost the cure for cancer at the same time.

The second thing that inspired the cartoon was the news that another tropical storm (this one called “Nigel” so it’ll probably be just as dense as the lead guitarist for Spinal Tap) was expected to become the fifth hurricane and the ninth tropical storm of the hurricane season which precedes the hurricane playoffs which, if MLB has anything to say about it, will last until early December because they don’t care if ballgames are played in blizzards and the players have to wear parkas and snowshoes as long as those winter playoff games make them money.

And now – however reluctantly – back to politics.

Speaking of money, in an effort to make more of it because apparently they just don’t have enough yet, Saudi Arabia cut oil production to drive the price up and recently announced they were extending those cuts so I decided to show what those extended cuts look like.

According to a story in the Kansas City Star, industry leaders and senators have agreed that Artificial Intelligence needs to be regulated and apparently they semi-recently held something called the “Congressional Hackathon” which sounds like what happens when a bunch of clueless politicians decide to show the rest of us they’re “hip” and “with it.”

Congressional critics – AKA: “Americans” – have complained the Congress has been too slow to understand the implications of Artificial Intelligence, which is totally unfair because Congress has had its hands full trying to grasp the implications of the internet and last I heard they still thought it was a “series of tubes.”

Counting on Congress to regulate AI is pretty much like counting on Mitch McConnell to write rap lyrics.

(Question: in the above photo does Mitch actually believe that’s what a smile looks like?)

OK once again that’s it for the weekend and I hope you have a good one and if you’re in the UAW I also hope you get a fair deal and get back to work soon so you can afford to subscribe to my blog so I can start living like a Big 3 Automaker CEO.

Me and my kids would appreciate it.

http://kingfeatures.com/comics/editorial-cartoons-a-z/