{"id":186097,"date":"2014-05-13T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/13\/heads-they-win-tails-you-lose\/"},"modified":"2014-05-13T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T00:35:00","slug":"heads-they-win-tails-you-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/05\/13\/heads-they-win-tails-you-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Heads they Win, Tails you Lose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our executive class, <a href=\"http:\/\/dissenter.firedoglake.com\/2014\/05\/12\/despite-falling-revenues-walmart-increases-pay-for-top-execs\/\">Walmart edition<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Sometimes the effects of our social and income inequality are easy to see, but hard to measure.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">But not in this case: despite falling revenues, and despite only reluctantly paying minimum wage to its workers, Walmart increased the pay for its top executives. The people who do the labor get little. The people who make the decisions that can cause falling revenues get more (and more and\u2026) Could it be any clearer what is going on?<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">This is what Thomas Piketty\u2019s theories look like in practice.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">A key question for detectives trying to figure out who may have committed a crime is to ask cui bono, \u201cWho benefits?\u201d Who stands to profit from a murder, from a crime? That\u2019s often your perp.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In Walmart\u2019s case, it is not its stockholders who profited. Indeed, this has not been a money year for Walmart shareholders. Despite an overall good twelve months for the stock market in general, Walmart stock bumbled due to lower sales growth.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">No joy for Walmart\u2019s customers, or its own employees. Walmart cited cuts in federal food stamps as one reason for its weak sales increase. Since they are paid only minimum wage (and Walmart fights vigorously against any increases) and only are given 39 hours a week or less so as not to qualify for full-time benefits, a fair number of Walmart\u2019s own workers receive food stamps.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Good news though for Walmart\u2019s top executives. The company employed some accounting tricks to \u201cadjust\u201d on paper actual revenues to make them appear higher than in reality. On the strength of that \u201cadjusted\u201d performance, William Simon, CEO of Walmart\u2019s United States unit, received total compensation of $13 million last year. Of that, $1.5 million was a \u201cperformance bonus,\u201d paid out actually for declining revenues. In fact, six of Walmart\u2019s top executives received a total of $8.42 million in cash incentive payments for 2014 even as revenues fell and the company closed stores. The former employees of those stores, needless to say, did not receive any performance pay bonuses as they fell deeper into poverty.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They don&#8217;t get it.<\/p>\n<p>They won&#8217;t get it if they are riding in an oxcart to Madame la Guillotine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our executive class, Walmart edition: Sometimes the effects of our social and income inequality are easy to see, but hard to measure.But not in this case: despite falling revenues, and despite only reluctantly paying minimum wage to its workers, Walmart increased the pay for its top executives. The people who do the labor get little. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,970,969,1023],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-corruption","category-evil","category-labor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}