By Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. Posted September 3, 2007.

This Labor Day lets not forget those among us who are the most fortunate.

On Labor Day we customarily give a nod to America's underpaid and overworked blue and pink collar workers -- janitors, flight attendants, forklift operators and the like.

But this year let's go a step further and salute the most reviled and despised of the people who make our economy happen, the mere mention of whom causes the average forklift operator to spit on the floor. You are thinking perhaps of telemarketers, human traffickers, and the fiends who answer the phone when you to try to make a claim on your health insurance. But I'm talking about our CEOs.

Just in time for the holiday, two liberal groups -- United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies -- have issued a gleefully malicious new attack on our CEO class. They point out that the CEOs of large companies earn an average of $10.8 million a year, which is 362 times as much as the average American worker, and retire with $10.1 million in their special exclusive CEO pension funds.

They further point out that the compensation of US CEOs wildly exceeds that of their European counterparts, who, we are invited to believe, work equally hard.

And, in what they must think is their cleverest point of all, the UFE/IPS folks state that: "The 20 highest-paid individuals at publicly traded corporations last year took home, on average, $36.4 million. That's ... 204 times more than the 20 highest-paid generals in the U.S. military."

You know what we're supposed to think here: Wow, but generals have all that responsibility! They're responsible for national security, or at least for conducting the wars that increase the threats to our national security and thus help justify ever greater increases in our national security apparatus!

But someone has to speak up for our beleaguered CEO class, and let me begin with that spurious comparison to the top military brass. Could we put patriotic emotion aside for a moment and look at this in a hard-headed, bottom-line, sort of way?

Suppose you are the general responsible for all the service people currently in Iraq, about 130,000 in round numbers, and suppose you manage to lose every single one of them in some ghastly miscalculation. With the death benefit for the family of a dead soldier running at $100,000, your mistake will cost a total of $13 billion. Sounds like a lot, I know, until you consider that a hedge fund manager or financial company CEO can lose that much in a single afternoon, without anyone even noticing. Q.E.D., there is simply no comparison between a general and a CEO.

That's a side issue though. The real point, which the CEOs and their usual defenders are strangely reticent about making, is that it's damn expensive to be rich, and extravagantly expensive to be super-rich.

Before you start playing your air violins, consider the costs of maintaining up to five different homes, some of them up to 45,000 square feet in size, most with swimming pools, tennis courts, guest houses, and wine cellars requiring constant supervision.

The poor whine about having no home at all, or maybe a two-bedroom apartment for a family of six. They should just think for one moment of the tribulations involved in running four or more mansions, each with its own full-time staff. There's the problem of getting between them, for example. A friend of mine, of very modest means himself, consults for a billionaire couple who commute between London and Los Angeles by private jet, with their dogs following in a second private jet.

But much of what we know about the extreme costs of wealth comes from Wall Street Journal columnist Robert Frank's recent book Richistan. The ultra-rich, who are drawn largely from the CEO class, require staffs of about 40-50 people, including not only cooks, maids and nannies, but "lifestyle managers" (to set up the entertainment schedule) and -- in a throw-back to the original gilded age -- butlers.

It's the butler's job, among other things, to deal with any issues that may arise from the proliferation of homes. For example, if the boss is in Palm Beach, Frank reports, "and wants to send his jet to New York to pick up a Chateau LaTour from his South Hampton cellar, the butler makes it happen, no questions asked."

Nor are the ultra-rich in a position to cut back on their expenses -- by, say, running down to the supermarket for a $12 bottle of chardonnay. If they were to do so, their friends would despise them. As Frank explains, the Richistani word "affluent," meaning someone with less than $10 million in assets, translates into English roughly as "scum."

A mean-spirited critic of the ultra-rich CEO class might grumble that the rich should simply find a new circle of friends. But who exactly might these new friends be? If you were in the $100- million-in-assets set, you could hardly consort with the class of people for whom a pittance like $10,000 might be a transformative sum, possibly allowing granny to get her insulin and the children to have warm winter clothes.

People of that class could not be trusted not to pocket the silverware or rip out the gold fixtures in your powder room. They might even make a lunge for your throat.

(Barbara Ehrenreich admits to being on the board of the Institute for Policy Studies.)

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The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. United State Constitution, Art. I Sec. 9 Par. 2

"Dissent is the Highest form of Patriotism" -- Howard Zinn

Now that was hilarious and true. The facts are, that we can do nothing about these wealth stealers, hoarders of treasure and livers of oppulence outside of open rebellion, and that most assuredly would be quashed by the thugs known as Police and National guard. These new megarich don't know how to act like the responsible rich of old, no huge charitable contributions, (I think those are to appease their conscience) or programs to help the poor. "Let them eat cake" (shit)!

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Just more class envy:

Biography
Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Alexander. Her father was a copperminer who went on to study at Carnegie Mellon University and who eventually became an executive at the Gillette Corporation. Ehrenreich studied physics at Reed College, graduating in 1963. Her senior thesis was entitled Electrochemical oscillations of the silicon anode. In 1968, she received a Ph.D in cell biology from Rockefeller University.
Citing her interest in social change ([1]), she opted for political activism, instead of pursuing a scientific career. She met her first husband, John Ehrenreich, during an anti-war activism campaign in New York City.
In 1970, her first child, Rosa (later Rosa Brooks), was born. Her second child, Benjamin, was born in 1972. Barbara divorced John and in 1983 married Gary Stevenson, a warehouse employee who later became a union organizer. She divorced Stevenson in the early 1990s.
From 1991 to 1997, Ehrenreich was a regular columnist for Time magazine. Currently, she contributes regularly to The Progressive.
Ehrenreich has also written for the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Atlantic Monthly, Ms, The New Republic, Z Magazine, In These Times, Salon.com, and other publications.
In 1998 and 2000, she taught essay writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 2004, Ehrenreich wrote a month-long guest column for the New York Times while regular columnist Thomas Friedman was on leave and she was invited to stay on as a columnist. She declined, saying that she preferred to spend her time more on long-term activities, such as book-writing.
Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the release of her book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In her article "Welcome to Cancerland," published in the November 2001 issue of Harper's Magazine, she describes her breast cancer experience and debates the medical industry's problems with the issue of breast cancer.
In 2006, Ehrenreich founded United Professionals, an organization whose website, http://www.unitedprofessionals.org, describes it as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization for white-collar workers, regardless of profession or employment status. We reach out to all unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed workers — people who bought the American dream that education and credentials could lead to a secure middle class life, but now find their lives disrupted by forces beyond their control."
Ehrenreich is currently an honorary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America. She also serves on the NORML Board of Directors.

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

You Know what Vi, I am getting sick and tired of you calling anyone who doesn't agree with your 1950's thinking a Socialist and Communist. Sen. Joseph McCarthy was wrong then as he is would be now. It is the So-called Conservatives who have ran this country into the ground. If you weren't so stupid you would see that the Democrats and the Republicans have changed places in the political Spectrum. Also if you haven't noticed that Corporations are the new Communism and your so-called Free trade is based on global socialism. God Damn Vi, pull your head out of your ass.
The Rules which you learned to play no longer apply.

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The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. United State Constitution, Art. I Sec. 9 Par. 2

"Dissent is the Highest form of Patriotism" -- Howard Zinn

1. Guess what, Dank ... I could give a shit less if you are getting sick and tired of anything I post. What you think really doesn't matter much to me.

2. If you think I suffer from 1950's thinking ... read the fucking article. I didn't write it ... I just posted it. Now if you don't agree, take issue with the article and point out where the untruths are.

Here. If you missed it the first time:

Ehrenreich is currently an honorary co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

3. And as the debates continue, you become more and more insulting. Why don't you try to strengthen your arguments instead of just slinging mud?

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Whats wrong with class envy Vi, why, after all I am not the one responsible for the distruction of the american middle class, THEY ARE!!!

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any images or information presented by krime 13 are fictional, and should not be taken seriously, if the person reading them is employed by a law enforcing agency, they are not authorized to read or use them in any way.

Ask anyone who has lived under any of the police states in Eastern Europe during the reign of the failed Soviet Union what's wrong with class envy. You'll get a real eye opener.

Vi

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

Eastern Europe was a corrupt socialist state, and just like in America today there were ultra rich 5% and poor 95% the only difference is instead of CEO they were called Deputy or Director of so and so... So Vi , current american system is much like the corrupt socialism of the eastern Europe eccept we dont have the fr4ee healthcare or free higher education , and oh yeah, our public education is way worse than theyrs ever were...

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any images or information presented by krime 13 are fictional, and should not be taken seriously, if the person reading them is employed by a law enforcing agency, they are not authorized to read or use them in any way.

if you want more out of life....fucking take it.

If I adapt your policy, I forsee much bloodshed...

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any images or information presented by krime 13 are fictional, and should not be taken seriously, if the person reading them is employed by a law enforcing agency, they are not authorized to read or use them in any way.