I'm going to explain a harsh truth here. Companies are in business to earn money for their investors. That's it.
Despite whatever you may hear, it is NOT about the patients (heard in the pharma and biotech industry), it's not about healthy living (food industry), it's not about a healthy lifestyle (certain sneakers, workout fashions, etc.) it's not about ANYTHING other than the investor community.
What you eat, what you ingest, what you wear is not there to nurture you, heal you, or keep you warm and dry…it's there to line the pockets of the very wealthiest people in our society.
Here are two recent articles detailing exactly how far we've come in the greed game:
This one, from the Huffington Post speaks to how business has managed to skirt a law to REVEAL CEO pay, the greed here is heart stopping. The question is, could someone else do as good or even better than these money sucking CEOs? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/ceo-to-worker-pay-ratio_n_3184623.html
Bloomberg puts a more personal spin on things; they show the difference between a JC Penney employee who lost her ($8.30/hr) job vs. their recently departed CEO. Yes, he did an awful job, yes, he walked away with wads of cash. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/ceo-pay-1-795-to-1-multiple-of-workers-skirts-law-as-sec-delays.html
It's astonishing to me that this system has gotten so far and that the American public doesn't seem to mind supporting this system. Do people really believe that these overpaid CEOs are worth the money they're paid? I've heard people say to me, "well, they've worked hard for it". I work hard; just about everyone I KNOW works hard and none of us are pulling in that kind of money.
Here's another article, one talking about the 10 things Americans don't know about America, http://bananenplanet.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/10-things-most-americans-dont-know-about-america/ this article actually touches on the fact that America's primary economic intention is to satisfy the investor community.
I can say with some certainty that the current selection of FDA approved pharmaceuticals on the market are nothing short of miracles. We have cured or controlled countless horrible diseases just in my lifetime and that's GREAT. What isn't great is what we pay the CEOs and other officers of these companies. In some cases a pharmaceutical CEO makes in one year what an entire drug research and development program would cost over the entire lifespan of that program! Yes, it's true.
Many research programs get started but most of them fail before every getting near to an actual product and all those failures cost money, LOTS OF MONEY but there is value there as well. For all the failures many make it through to save or enhance our lives. But why oh why does that mean that the CEO, CFO, CMO, etc. of these companies are entitled to salaries and bonuses equal or greater than the entire cost of a drug development program?
And why do we do nothing here to put a cap on that? Trust me when I say that not one of these people is the sole or even PRIMARY reason that a particular drug makes it to market. Their goal is to bring value for the investors not better health and well-being to the public.
Another bit of background reading, http://www.fiercepharma.com/story/novos-exceptional-first-quarter-still-disappoints/2013-05-01?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal about a diabetes company, you'll notice that most of this article is about the investment community and their response to the Q1 earnings update. But here's what ISN'T said, this is a company that primarily makes insulin to expand their product line they've gone further and further down the insulin path into more and more EXPENSIVE territory. Guess what folks, you could remain reasonably healthy with diabetes by using regular ol' human insulin and a vial and syringe. As long as you were compliant about testing your blood glucose and knew how and when to inject your insulin you'd be fine, but that isn't what's at question here, it's how well the investment community is responding to how well a company can generate profits.
It doesn't matter if you're the CEO of Target or the CEO of Pfizer, you're there for one reason and one reason alone…investor profits. The clothes you stock your shelves with can be poorly made by cheap labor in foreign lands because that boosts profits and higher profits equal higher rates of return for investors and that's the only good news. Buy American you say? How when no one will SELL AMERICAN. No one will INVEST in America in the truest sense of the word.
How much really is ENOUGH? If I made $17 million this year and was expecting $21 million next year how would I even SPEND all of that before I die? Why can't this be cycled back to the employees and the products and services offered? Why are the rich so breathtakingly richer than the rest of us; and what is it really buying us? It's buying us unemployment as jobs are off-shored, it's buying us inferior quality products, it's buying us American poverty and a forced greater dependence on welfare and other social systems.
I still have no answers to this but I can't help but raise the issue again..and again…and again.
Please folks educate yourselves' about these things, if corporate America isn't willing to admit it has a problem then maybe if we all wise up we can find a way to change things, Occupy had good intentions but nothing changed. We desperately need some change.
