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 a very 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. Unfortunately, Joe Biden has changed so much physically and mentally in just the past three years that I really don't think he would be an effective US President, especially in these very troubled and fast-paced times where the country is in critical need of a highly-energetic, exceptionally bright, Barack-Obama-like US President.
I thought Tulsi Gabbard, who appears to be supported by the Russians, again gave a debate performance which wasn't very Presidential. By supporting Gabbard, the Russian Government wants to further divide the US people. The last thing the Russians want is an exceptionally bright, perceptive, energetic, charismatic, calm US President like Pete Buttigieg. During the first seven and a half years of the Obama Administration, nearly all of the Russian Government's underhanded initiatives were stymied. But during the Trump Administration, the Russians seem to be getting much of what they request of the Trump Administration. With the Russian Government's highly-effective influence on the US elections, in many respects, the US Government has now turned into a puppet of the Russian Government.
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 costing between $20 to $30 trillion over the next ten years which would compound to between $50 to $80 trillion over the next 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. We love our supplementary private health care insurance under Medicare and many of our friends love their Medicare Advantage private health care option available under Medicare.
Barack Obama was 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 Obama 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.
I previously did research and made posts on the annual pay and employee benefits percentage increases that the Top-Tier Executives of 41 large Los Angeles area Companies were rewarded with in the past five to ten years.
I am now turning my attention to some large Southern California Companies located in the San Diego area.
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 the 14th and last San Diego area company that I am addressing here is PriceSmart Inc, which owns and operates 149 U.S. style membership shopping warehouse clubs in Central America, in the Carribbean and in Columbia.
From annual compensation information contained in Proxy Statement and S-1 filings with the US SEC, the chart at the bottom below shows PriceSmart Inc's Top-Tier Executives Annual Total Compensation for each of the two consecutive full years of employment for the past five years.
PriceSmart Inc's Top-Tier Executives Average Annual Pay and Employee Benefits Increase was a completely off-the-charts 87.4% per year during the past five years, which is the very highest of the 14 very large San Diego Area Companies I have addressed so far.
- PriceSmart +87.4% per year for the past five years
- Glaukos +62.0% per year for the most recent five years
- QUALCOMM +47.4% per year for the past five years
- Neurocrine Biosciences +45.2% per year for the past five years
- Mirati Therapeutics +44.2% per year for the past five years
- Ionis Pharmaceuticals +33.1% per year for the past five years
- DexCom +32.0% per year for the past six years
- Sempra Energy +30.1% per year for the past five years
- Realty Income Corp +29.8% per year for the past six years
- MaxLinear +22.1% per year for the past five years
- Kratos Defense & Security Solutions +19.3% per year for the past five years
- Illumina +16.7% per year for the past five years
- Jack in the Box +12.5% per year for the past five years
- ResMed +10.2% per year for the past five years
So who is causing these extremely high Top-Tier Executives pay percentages increases, which tend to be much higher than the Companies' actual financial performance?
And who is causing the annual minuscule raises for the company non-executive employees?
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.
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.
It's simple math. The lower the annual percentage raise for the Company's non-executive employees, the higher the Company's annual profits and thus also the higher the annual percentage raise for the Company's executives since their annual pay raise is tied to Company profits.
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 who are vigorously fighting to be at the top of the list of US Corps continuing to expand income inequality.
So how do you solve that problem?
Vote for US Senators, US House members and a US President who isn't controlled by the US Corps which view their non-executive employees and contract workers as Costs rather than as People ..... they all don't but a clear majority of them do.
It's that simple.
| FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | FYE | |||||
| August | August | August | August | August | August | August | August | August | August | |||||
| PriceSmart Inc | 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 | |||||
| Laparte Former CEO | 880 | 876 | 876 | 8,135 | 8,135 | 809 | 809 | 869 | 869 | 4,104 | ||||
| Heffner Former CEO | N/A | N/A | 462 | 1,451 | 1,451 | 424 | 424 | 443 | 443 | 450 | ||||
| Naylon COO | 579 | 570 | 570 | 3,120 | 3,120 | 515 | 515 | 537 | 537 | 546 | ||||
| Velasco General Counsel | 866 | 655 | ||||||||||||
| Von Chong EVP | 471 | 462 | ||||||||||||
| Martin Chief Merchandising Officer | 2,071 | 450 | 450 | 469 | 469 | 476 | ||||||||
| Gans General Counsel | 430 | 457 | 457 | 466 | ||||||||||
| Totals | 2,796 | 2,563 | 1,908 | 12,706 | 14,777 | 2,198 | 2,628 | 2,775 | 2,775 | 6,042 | ||||
| Annual % Change vs Prior Year | 9.1% | -85.0% | 572.3% | -5.3% | -54.1% | |||||||||
| 5 Year Average Per Year % Change | 87.4% |
