The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur weighs in on a recent article at the Huffington Post via Reuters, which at a time when we've got record income disparity in the United States is yet another example of why we need to get the money out of politics, do
August 31, 2011

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The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur weighs in on a recent article at the Huffington Post via Reuters, which at a time when we've got record income disparity in the United States is yet another example of why we need to get the money out of politics, do something to fix these corporate tax loopholes and offshore tax havens and last but not least, address the issue of CEO pay being completely out of whack with what the average employee out there is making.

Highest-Paid CEOs Often Earn More Than Company Pays In Income Taxes, Study Finds:

Twenty-five of the 100 highest paid U.S. CEOs earned more last year than their companies paid in federal income tax, a pay study said on Wednesday.

It also found many of the companies spent more on lobbying than they did on taxes.

At a time when lawmakers are facing tough choices in a quest to slash the national debt, the report from the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-leaning Washington think tank, quickly hit a nerve.

They went on to say that after reading this, ranking member Democratic Representative, Elijah Cummings called for a hearing on executive compensation to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform's chair, Darrell Issa. I'm not holding my breath for that to do an ounce of good. That said, I'd like to hear more statements like this from every Democrat in the near future:

In a letter to that committee's chairman, Republican Darrell Issa, Cummings asked "to examine the extent to which the problems in CEO compensation that led to the economic crisis continue to exist today."

He also asked "why CEO pay and corporate profits are skyrocketing while worker pay stagnates and unemployment remains unacceptably high," and "the extent to which our tax code may be encouraging these growing disparities."

Go read the rest of the article for a breakdown of some of the numbers that Cenk talked about in the clip above. And as he noted towards the end of the clip, this is yet another example of why that repatriation tax holiday is just a really bad idea.

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