By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
Gentlemen (and you are almost all white males):
I am writing to you today to express my utter disgust with your behaviour in general, and especially your corruption and greed.
You are a class of people who evidently think that not only does their shit not stink, it doesn’t even taste bad.
Well I have news for you, gentlemen: Your shit reeks.
In Japan, there is a law limiting executive compensation to no more than 24 times the wage of a company’s average worker.
In North America, there are no limits and it is not unusual for some corporate executives to receive hundreds or even thousands of times the compensation of an average worker.
What makes any of you a reasonable candidate for earning hundreds or even thousands of times the wage of an average worker? Do you do hundreds or even thousands of times as much work?
What qualifies any of you to make more in a year than many workers see in their entire lifetimes – whether or not your corporation is a failure? Are your failures more precious than those of others?
What justifies the posh lifestyles most of you lead – much of it on corporate and personal tax deductions? Can’t you even live off your own unconscionable seven- or eight-figure compensations?
In recent years, you have not even been creating any significant real new wealth – but you’ve certainly coveted and claimed for yourselves almost all of what little new wealth has been created.
For years you have indulged in mindless corporate mergers and takeovers and the consequent downsizings and mass layoffs.
You have robbed the average worker of all hope of ever having job security in your corporate nirvana.
Your unbridled greed – and that of the rest of your pampered class – has now bankrupted the global mass market by progressively impoverishing the middle class and the poor.
Being staunch “free marketers,” however, you will all claim that your unconscionable compensation is not the product of corruption or greed on your part but merely the “magic” of the marketplace.
You live by the law of the jungle, discrediting any human activity that does not create profits for some greedy corporation and demand that all within your “free market” society be either predator or prey.
Your compensation – relative to that of the average worker makes a mockery of the motto: “An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay?” Can any of you honestly and sanely say you deserve the lucre lavished upon you at a time when more than three million Americans and more than 250,000 Canadians are homeless?
Can any of you honestly say you deserve the lucre lavished upon you when you know full well that your own unbridled greed is a major factor in the deaths every three seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year of a child in the Third World under the age of five.
Maybe you should all go to the executive washroom and wipe your mouths. That “free-market,” “trickle-down” verbal diarrhea you spout is turning your lips and tongues brown.
Have any of you ever heard of the concept of “enough?” Haven’t any of your mothers ever told you that you should stop eating when your tummy is full?
Yours very truly,