Friday, May 1, 2015

Even the "owners" are getting ripped off

The plunder of wealth by the oligarchs and elites has reached levels where even the "owners" of enterprises are being ripped off.

Remember George W. Bush and the "ownership" society? That was a euphemism for, "We're going to cut your wages and salaries, make jobs hard to get and fast-track the flow of wealth up to the top. So if you want a piece of the pie, you'd better become an owner, like, own stocks or assets or something. Own a business."

So that's what most people did because they had no choice. Jobs became scarce so they either had to take a risk and start a business (most fail) or, they were forced to scrimp and save and add, monthly, to their 401k's and other retirement vehicles that mostly invested in stocks. They became "owners."

This directive continues on today under Obama, so don't think that he is not part of this scheme. He is.

I'll leave aside for a moment that the banksters and other Wall Street "geniuses" nearly killed everybody's savings with their wild casino games (and many people still haven't recovered), which in the end we had to pay for with higher taxes and more cuts in spending (taxes), leaving us profoundly ripped off.

But some of us still had our stocks, either held directly or through those retirement plans and we were happy and placated, because stocks came back and dividends grew--not by much--but they grew and we felt as if that ownership society thing was finally paying off like they told us it would.

Oh really?

Well, take a look at these two graphs. One is corporate profits as a percentage of GDP and the other is dividends as a percent of personal income.

Corporate profits as a percent of GDP


 Dividends as a percent of Personal Income

As you can see, profits are at an all-time high as a percent of GDP, whereas dividends are not even though profits and stock prices are.

So what's happening here?

The only explanation is that the executives running these enterprises (who are, in 99% of the cases NOT the real owners) are taking more and more for themselves and giving us--the real owners--less. In fact, it almost looks like, if dividends rise too fast, as they did coming out of the Great Recession, they will deliberately slow the pace of  wealth sharing because they need to take even more for themselves.

And you wonder why stock analysts are now saying valuations are high? BECAUSE PROFITS ARE FLOWING INTO THESE MOTHERFUCKERS' POCKETS. THAT'S WHY!

This is once again a blatant screw job by elites and oligarchs who are really nothing more than a bunch of corrupt, scumbag mafia and they have taken control of our lawmakers our government and our lives. 

We really need to take back control of what is rightfully ours. This shit's gotta end.

1 comment:

NeilW said...

Share buybacks Mike.

Because giving your company's money to people who no longer want to be invested in your company is really smart (TM).