GREED AT A GLANCE
South Koreans enjoy Internet access today at speeds that run well over 100 times faster what most Americans can get — at half the monthly cost
Americans typically pay. What do we have that South Koreans don't? We
have high-tech corporate execs routinely pulling in mega millions for
delivering second-rate technology. The latest sign of the immense
fortunes our high-tech titans are raking in: News reports last week
revealed the late November sale
of a Silicon Valley home for $117.5 million, the second-highest price
ever paid for a U.S. residence. The home sits in a neighborhood that
hosts “a Who’s Who of Silicon Valley tech and finance,” just ten miles
from the third-most-expensive home in America, a manse in Los Altos
Hills that last year sold for $100 million . . .
All
during World War II, to make sure that “a few do not gain from the
sacrifices of many,” President Franklin Roosevelt insisted on a
“steeply graduated excess-profits tax.” No such tax, notes
national security analyst Walter Pincus, has been in place for the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that absence has suited America’s
defense industry just fine. Profits at America’s five top defense giants
have soared 450 percent since 2002. One beneficiary: General
Dynamics CEO Jay Johnson, a former admiral who joined GD a bit over 10
years ago. Johnson retired from his executive-suite stint last month.
Details about his final year’s rewards haven’t yet surfaced. But we do
know that Johnson pulled in $13.8 million in 2010 and $16.1 million more in 2011. At that year's end, Johnson held General Dynamics shares worth $41.3 million . . .
Still
more proof that the recovery from the Great Recession has been a
smashing success — for America’s most comfortable — has come from
Scottsdale, Arizona. That city's annual Barrett-Jackson car collector
auction has just collected
$109 million, the same record take the auction registered in 2007, the
last year before the recession hit. This year’s sale highlight: A
Mercedes-Benz actor Clark Gable bought for $7,295 in 1955 — about
$63,000 after adjusting for inflation — sold for $2.03 million.
America’s 400 highest incomes in 1955 averaged, after federal taxes,
just $846,000, about $7 million in today’s dollars. In 2009, the latest
year with stats available, America’s top 400 averaged $162.1 million after taxes.
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