the Walnut Diary

In Canada corporate CEOs average 155 times the income of average employees of their organizations. Yet Harper and the PMO want to give them more money. This is in keeping with the neo-cons’ fondness for cozy berths on boards of directors for themselves after retirement. See the example of Mike Harris in Ontario, an uneducated man attached to a top law firm with many lucrative directorships.

To facilitate this, the PMO has simply changed the label from the old “corporate welfare bums” to the new and improved “job creators” and the media and pollsters have obediently lined up to accept the new version of the truth.

So what’s the difference between a job creator and a corporate welfare bum? Well, when the latter phrase became popular in 1972 to ridicule corporate leaders becoming rich off government largesse, a CEO made forty times the average wage of his workers. That’s the difference: if you only make forty times an average salary, you’re a bum in Canadian politics. If you make 155 times the wage of the average Joe, you’re a neo-con god, and you have the right to demand further sacrifices.