CEO salaries increased from 40 to 400 times average worker's
Under the tax cuts pushed through Congress since 2000, for every dollar in reductions for a middle-class family, the top 1% of households will receive $54, and those with $1 million of more in income will benefit by $191!
During the first 3 years, the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 3.5 million, while the income for the 400 wealthiest Americans jumped by 10% just in the year 2002.
Another indication of the growing division between rich and poor in recent years is that the salaries of corporate chief executive officers have gone from 40 times to 400 times the average worker's pay.
Even though there was strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell in 2004, after adjusting for inflation--the 1st such drop in many years.
I do not believe in wage and price controls, but...
Government alone cannot bring down the rate of inflation. When a level of high inflation is expected to continue, then companies raise prices to protect their profit margins against prospective increases in wages and other costs, while workers demand
higher wages as protection against expected price increases. It's like an escalation in the arms race, and understandably, no one wants to disarm alone.
Now, no one firm or a group of workers can halt this process.
It's an effort that we must all make together. I'm therefore asking government, business, labor, and other groups to join in a voluntary program to moderate inflation by holding wage and price increases in each sector of the economy during 1978 below
the average increases of the last 2 years.
I do not believe in wage and price controls. A sincere commitment to voluntary constraint provides a way--perhaps the only way--to fight inflation without Government interference.
Q: [to Ford]: How is it possible to promise tax cuts and to reach goal of balancing the budget?
FORD: For every dollar of tax reduction we had to have an equal reduction in federal expenditures. With a budget of $395 billion, that would have permitted
$25 billion tax reduction. I recommended a 50% cut in the growth of federal spending. With that limitation, we can fully justify tax reductions. With more money in the hands of the taxpayers, and with more money in the hands of business to expand, to
modernize, to provide more jobs, we'll have a more prosperous economy.
CARTER: The present tax structure is a welfare program for the rich. The philosophy of the GOP has been to pile taxes on low-income people and to take them off corporations.
Since the late 60s, we've had a reduction in the percentage of taxes paid by corporations from 30% to about 20%. We've had an increase in taxes paid by individuals from 14% to 20%. This is what the Republicans have done and why tax reform is important.