A clear majority of the US is desperately seeking in the next US President someone who can unify the country. Of all the Democratic Presidential candidates, Pete Buttigieg will be the best unifier of a very divided country.
Joe Biden is an exceptionally nice guy but his 77 years of age clearly impaired the effectiveness of his communication in this debate as it had in the other debates.
While Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both performed well in the debate, they are still both burdened significantly by their positions on Medicare For All, which is fiscally extremely expensive (probably cost $20 to $30 trillion over ten years which would compound to $50 to $80 trillion over twenty years) and which also doesn't permit citizens to keep their present health care insurance even if they really like it, and many do, including many union members who have fought hard to get the exceptional health care insurance that they now have and also including the rapidly-growing each year to now more than 20 million seniors who have chosen what they consider to be an attractive private health care insurance plan available in Medicare.
Barack Obama is spot on when he recently said that Democratic Presidential candidates shouldn’t pursue policies that were not rooted in reality.
And Obama was also spot on when he said that Democrats should push hard on the income inequality issue,
arguing that this is an area where the room to talk about this in bold ways is
greater than it was in 2008.
Further he said that it is very important for the Democratic
Party to be clear and bold about saying that we are going to initiate structural
changes that reduce that inequality.
The sixth Democratic 2020 Presidential candidate debate will be held on December 19, 2019 on the lovely campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
Thus I will now be doing research and making posts on the annual pay and employee benefits percentage increases that the Top-Tier Executives of large Los Angeles area Companies were rewarded with in the past five to ten years.
So far in my research of large US Corps I have shown that their Top-Tier Executives have been rewarded continually with just enormous annual percentage increases in pay and employee benefits, mostly stock equity compensation, to the extent that the key issue to US citizens should be the huge and continuing Income Inequality Expansion which is at the core of many critical problems the US faces.
While increasing the US federal minimum wage will help here, there is a much broader and critical problem that needs to be solved. The annual percentage increase in the pay and employee benefits of Company non-executive employees are minuscule in relation to that of Company executive employees and this has been going on for decades. When Corporate CEOs and CFOs primarily view non-executive employees as Costs rather than as People, this is what happens. And neither political party has had the courage to take on US Corps here.
I will be doing this research mostly by stock market capitalization and thus my first Los Angeles area company is Walt Disney Co, which is nearly double the size of the second largest LA area company Amgen.
From annual compensation information contained in Company Proxy Statement filings with the US SEC, the chart below shows Walt Disney Co's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of the two consecutive full years of employment for the past five years.
Walt Disney Co's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase was a blistering 18.0% per year during the past five years and 58.2% just in the most recent year 2018.
So who is determining these extremely high Top-Tier Executives pay percentages increases, which tend to be extremely higher than the Companies' actual financial performance?
Generally it works like this.
The Company's Board of Directors set the pay standards for the total compensation of the CEO for each year. But this gets a bit cumbersome when the CEO is also the Chairman of the Board, as is the case with Disney.
Then the CEO establishes the pay standards for the Top-Tier Executives, which is reviewed by the Company's Board of Directors.
And the CEO also usually approves the overall pay and employee benefits annual percentage increases for each of the other levels of the Company's employees.
So who is this huge, continuing Company pay and employee benefit income inequality "on"?
Clearly it's "on" the Company's CEO and the Company's Board of Directors.
And the only way it will be fixed is by wisely-designed US Government tax legislation.
Why hasn't it been fixed?
Because more than half of the US Congress, including more than a few Democrats, are effectively controlled by the US Corps or because the US President is controlled by the US Corps.
So how do you solve that problem?
Vote for US Senators, US House members and a US President who isn't controlled by US Corps.
It's that simple.
| FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | |||||
| Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | Sept | |||||
| Walt Disney Co | 2018 | 2017 | 2017 | 2016 | 2016 | 2015 | 2015 | 2014 | 2014 | 2013 | ||||
| Top-Tier | Total | Total | Total | Total | Total | Total | Total | Total | Total | Total | ||||
| Executive | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | Comp | ||||
| $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | $ 000s | |||||
| Robert Iger Chairman and CEO | 65,645 | 36,284 | 36,284 | 43,882 | 43,882 | 44,914 | 44,914 | 46,497 | 46,497 | 34,321 | ||||
| Alan Braverman General Counsel | 10,420 | 8,447 | 8,447 | 11,119 | 11,119 | 10,695 | 10,695 | 10,585 | 10,585 | 6,923 | ||||
| Christine McCarthy CFO | 11,840 | 8,947 | 8,947 | 10,199 | 10,199 | 7,070 | N/A | N/A | ||||||
| Jane Parker Chief HR Officer | 6,808 | 5,091 | 5,091 | 5,604 | 5,604 | 5,653 | 5,653 | 5,418 | 5,418 | 3,134 | ||||
| Kevin Mayer Chair Direct to Consumer and International | 11,620 | 8,435 | 8,435 | 10,125 | 10,125 | 8,007 | 8,007 | 5,803 | 5,803 | 4,294 | ||||
| Thomas Staggs Former COO | 21,757 | 20,006 | N/A | N/A | ||||||||||
| James Rasulo Advisor to Chairman and CEO | 15,077 | 16,178 | 16,178 | 10,696 | ||||||||||
| Totals | 106,333 | 67,204 | 67,204 | 80,929 | 102,686 | 96,345 | 84,346 | 84,481 | 84,481 | 59,368 | ||||
| Annual % Change | 58.2% | -17.0% | 6.6% | -0.2% | 42.3% | |||||||||
| 5 Year Average Per Year % Change | 18.0% | |||||||||||||
