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.
I will be doing this research mostly by stock market capitalization and thus the second Los Angeles area company I am addressing here is drug company Amgen.
From annual compensation information contained in Company Proxy Statement filings with the US SEC, the chart below shows Amgen's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of the two consecutive full years of employment for the past five years.
Amgen's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase was a reasonable 3.6% per year during the past five years.
| FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | |||||
| Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | Dec | |||||
| Amgen | 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 | |||||
| Bradway CEO | 18,555 | 16,900 | 16,900 | 16,850 | 16,850 | 16,098 | 16,098 | 13,962 | 13,962 | 13,650 | ||||
| Hooper Former EVP Commercial Ops | 7,065 | 6,553 | 6,553 | 6,965 | 6,965 | 6,415 | 6,415 | 5,622 | 5,622 | 6,180 | ||||
| Gordon EVP Commercial Op | N/A | N/A | ||||||||||||
| Harper Former EVP Research and Development | 6,835 | 6,056 | 6,056 | 6,213 | 6,213 | 5,608 | 5,608 | 5,346 | 5,346 | 5,863 | ||||
| Meline CFO | 6,861 | 5,858 | 5,858 | 6,218 | 6,218 | 6,593 | N/A | N/A | ||||||
| Reese EVP Research and Development | N/A | N/A | ||||||||||||
| Graham General Counsel | 5,345 | 4,522 | 4,522 | 6,420 | N/A | N/A | ||||||||
| Balachandran EVP Operations | 4,986 | 5,769 | ||||||||||||
| Peacock Former CFO | N/A | N/A | ||||||||||||
| Totals | 44,661 | 39,889 | 39,889 | 42,666 | 36,246 | 34,714 | 28,121 | 24,930 | 29,916 | 31,462 | ||||
| Annual % Change vs Prior Year | 12.0% | -6.5% | 4.4% | 12.8% | -4.9% | |||||||||
| 5 Year Average Per Year % Change | 3.6% |
