April 6, 2021: Barely Getting by on $43,284.59 Per Day

 

4/6/21: In news you might have missed, the U.S. and Iran are talking again, through intermediaries. 

The goal is to reinstitute the deal they worked out in 2015, which halted Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

 

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Incapable of working out a “better” deal, or any deal at all.

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Rejected-President Trump called that the “worst deal” ever made and withdrew from it, over our allies’ objections. Then he proved utterly incapable of working out a “better” deal, or any deal at all. So, Iran started gearing up its weapons program. In other words, Trump’s inability to broker any deal was kind of like his healthcare plan – in four long years no one ever saw. It was the Sasquatch of healthcare plans, purely mythological. His Iran deal was like the Yeti.

 

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IN TERMS OF MYTHS, you have surely heard that President Biden intends to raise taxes on Big Business. That means you may have heard the hosts on Fox Business howling that raising taxes will kill the U.S. economy and our favorite corporations will have no choice but to move offshore and dodge taxes like a Trump family member dodging service in the U.S. military. 

It turns out Bristol Myers Squibb has already moved its money offshore and dodged some serious taxes. The I.R.S. said this week that the company moved profits to an offshore entity in Ireland and paid zero federal taxes in 2012. The bill they sent the company claims BMS owes $1.38 billion. 

And can we all agree: We can’t raise the minimum wage to $15, because underpaid CEOs like Dr. Giovanni Caforio, who runs Bristol Myers Squibb, might have to take pay cuts themselves. Can we really expect Dr. Caforio to get by on less than the $18,767,253 he made in 2019? 

At $15 per hour, a BMS janitor could make that much in only 1,251,150 hours and 12 minutes. 

Let me see: 8,760 hours in a year (plus 24 in leap years). Yeah. A janitor at BMS could rake in all that dough in roughly 142 years, assuming no sleep or days off.

 

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YOU CAN broaden the picture, and find that 55 large U.S. companies made $40 billion in profits and paid zero federal taxes last year. Those corporations included Nike, purveyor of overpriced tennis shoes (made by foreign workers!), FedEx and Dish Network. Nearly half those companies, including Duke Energy, paid zero in taxes for the last three years, since the Trump Tax Cuts were implemented. Also tap-dancing around the tax code and paying less to I.R.S. than – for example – this happy blogger – the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. 

A quick check shows that J. R. Luciano, CEO of Archer Daniels, pulled down $18,047,123 in salary and compensation in 2019. 

Then again, 2019 was a “down year” for Mr. Luciano, who earned $19, 603,616 in 2018. But it was better than the starvation wages he received in 2017, when he and his family had to skimp on $15,798,876. Think of the struggle involved in getting by on only $43,284.59 per day.

Luciano, seen here showing how to pinch a penny.

 

Even Fox Business can’t resist doing a story on America’s highest paid CEO, Paycom Software Inc.’s Chad Richison. Last year, he pulled down a cool $211 million or as much as 13,938 individuals earning $7.25 per hour ($290 per week, $15,080 annually, with an extra chunk of change – $58 during a Leap Year). That’s the minimum wage in Oklahoma, where Paycom is headquartered. 

(To his credit, Richison has signed the Giving Pledge, created by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, promising to give away at least half of his wealth.)

 

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AND LET’S HEAR IT for food banks. In 2020, food banks passed out 50% more food than in 2019, as need surged. By year’s end, fifty million Americans were relying on food banks to get by; 1 in 4 American children were in families dependent on food banks. Just as God intended!