Executive Compensation

Kevin Drum has several good posts up today (one of them is on social security, a subject on which I have been composing a post over the past day or two at a slow pace).

Anyway, one of them is on executive compensation... we all know this problem has been getting way out of hand, but that doesn't mean that there is not new information out there that can surpirse the hell out of you:

....Aggregate top-five compensation was equal to 10 percent of aggregate corporate earnings in 1998-2002, up from 6 percent of aggregate corporate earnings during 1993-1997.

Got that? A full ten percent of corporate earnings go to the top five people in the company. The. Top. Five.

Damn... I mean, DAMN! One has to wonder why this isn't even just a little absurd to the conservatives (Oh wait! I think I know this one... it has something to do with them being the Republican donor base...)

Go read the whole thing...