The Insecurity State: Inequality’s Hidden Price Tag

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



The Insecurity State: Inequality’s Hidden Price Tag
May 1, 2010

What happens to societies that don’t share the wealth? They spend — and waste — a fortune guarding it.

By Sam Pizzigati


The Great Recession seems to have America’s CEOs spooked. Corporate spending on executive security, already high before hard times hit, is climbing still higher — at the same time corporations are slashing payroll and trimming worker benefits.

Since 2007, Starbucks has shelled out $1.6 million to protect CEO Howard Schultz. In 2009 alone, the Las Vegas Sands gaming giant paid $2.45 million to secure the person and property of CEO Sheldon Adelson. And Oracle software has shoveled $4.6 million, over the past three years, into a “residential security program” for billionaire CEO Larry Ellison.

All these totals, amazingly enough, understate the corporate CEO security tab. None of these totals, for instance, count spending on corporate jets. IBM, Dupont, and many other major corporations require their top execs, as a security precaution, to fly by private corporate jet, even for personal travel.

What’s driving all this corporate security spending? Have top executives gone paranoid with guilt? Are they having nightmares about unemployed peasants with pitchforks massing outside their executive suites? Or is the FBI actually reporting an uptick in credible threats? .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/guard-labor-inequalitys-hidden-price-tag/

[Demeter]

1. Sounds Like a Clear Confession to Me

The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.

King James Bible Proverbs 28:1