Unions

One can easily argue that unions have little power today. Last year alone union membership went down 11.3% compared to 1983 when union membership was 10.1% about 17.7 million union workers.

However, unofficial unions seem to be alive and well. Take for instance fast food workers most of whom do not belong to unions and yet are demonstrating for higher minimum wage that they can live on. Or, the strikers of Wal-Mart demonstrating over the same issues. They may not have union membership but look to do what unions did in our country before; seek decent wages to have their share of the economic pie of our country.

Today, we may be increasing the workforce but most of these increases seem to be coming from low paying jobs. Those are those who government assistance to survive, which is fought by the very folk who create these low pay jobs. It rather like “let them eat cake” and then taking away the cake.

Now there are very strong unions in this country but just don’t use that name. There is the medical union where doctors, pharmaceutical CEOs and the dominant in their unions get huge payouts creating an incredible expensive health care system in our country. How about the unofficial unions of CEO’s who studies show are basically more incompetent that every before but are getting ridiculous salaries and benefits so that they get as much as 380 times the pay of an average worker. There are lots of studies you can find but they all show the same results, CEOs get huge bucks while workers are loosing ground.

Ralph Lauren of Ralph Lauren

One-year total compensation ($MIL): $66.7
Net worth: $7.5 billion
Lauren is the highest paid Billionaires CEO on our list and was paid an annual bonus of $19.5 million in 2011. In contrast, he started Polo with $50,000 in 1976. The company now sells clothing, shoes, jewelry, home goods, fragrances. His Polo gear will outfit American athletes in the 2012 London summer games.

Richard Kinder of Kinder Morgan

One-year total compensation ($MIL): $60.9
*Received $1 in salary.Net worth: $8.2 billion
Paid $1 in annual salary. A former Army captain, Kinder quit as Enron president in 1996 and built a pipeline company with friend William Morgan. In 2011, Kinder Morgan, agreed to acquire El Paso Corp. and the combined company will boast some 80,000 miles of pipelines.

Big money people in this country have tremendous unions and also own the government, which continue to cut their tax rates so that they can have these huge salaries.

Big Bank CEOs have a great union. Their median increase in 2012 was 11% down from 16% in 2011. But these are the folk we rescue with government handouts while the industry raises the salaries of those who caused the problem. What a country.

Europe, I hope, is sending us a message to CEOs in this country. They are restraining their CEO pay so American double digit increases may be in jeopardy.

Oh yes, unions still exist in this country, they just are for the ultra rich rather than for common workers. I would suggest folk go read a history textbook to see why unions came into being and the costs that paid for those right to bring some perspective to today’s situation.

Howard Schultz of Starbucks

One-year total compensation ($MIL): $41.5
Net worth: $1.5 billion
The highest paid CEO this year in the Restaurants and Leisure industry. Schultz bought Starbucks from his bosses in 1987 and took it public in 1992. Schultz returned to the company's helm in 2008 after an eight-year break as chairman and turned around the struggling company.

Frederick Smith of FedEx

One-year total compensation ($MIL): $25.4
Net worth: $2.1 billion 
Smith got the idea for FedEx when he wrote a term paper at Yale about automation and logistics. He launched the company in 1971, putting every dollar he had into the venture. today FedEx is active in more than 220 countries and territories and maintains a fleet of 654 aircraft and 43,000 vehicles.

Charles and David Koch, of Wichita-basedKoch Industries Inc., are each worth $34 billion, according to an estimate from Forbes. That puts them tied at No. 6 on the magazine's list of the world's billionaires.