Study: Middle Class Screwed, Upper Class Fine
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Give me an example of a monopoly that has bothered you in the past.
Without rechecking my memory, I believe the salary is $15 Million. Since UNH had revenue of $82 bill, last year I saw, divide that together. That is .00018% of revenue. Dont blame salary on operating cost. Salary, bonuses, all this class warfare is not important on a % basis. If a company thinks it will profit with someone whos talent demands $15 mill to run it, so what? Owners (stockholders) would be happier paying $100,000. Yankees could pay $50,000 a player, the fans dont want to see me!
Acquisitions can occur for all kinds of reasons. Certainly they are not always in the consumer’s best interests, such as when companies buy up competition to achieve a monopoly, decrease consumer options, create barriers to entry, eliminate competing technologies etc.
Assuming that a CEO would always choose to reduce operating costs is naive. Read UNH’s annual report, and see if you can find Executive Compensation buried in there somewhere. You won’t find it. Perhaps it is disguised as OC.
@ladylordess
You want survival of the fittest? You want a class war? If so you’ll find out quick that “survival” and what makes “the fittest” has very little to do with the qualities that enable one to earn money in today’s economy.
Using piles of cash that daddy handed down to you as leverage to ensure your continued wealth, proves nothing about your overall fitness. And you can shit on your townspeople for just so long before they show up at your gated community with torches and pitchforks.
If “operating costs” could be reduced, owners (stockholders would make more money), and so would the CEO. You can rest assured, those costs are the least possible.
It is still less than 4%. What causes an acquisition? Having the cash to purchase another company not running very efficiently? An opportunint to bring more customers into a less expensive company? Bid Deal. As for denying patients, claims cannot be denied without cause, insurance is a contract. Claims are denied because a procedure mat not be covered, as per a contract. 12- 24 chiropractic visits max annually, for example. Lying about you aids also gets you thrown out, for fraud.
Your use of Yahoo Finance to calculate United Health’s profit margin reflects high medical costs, presumably at no fault to the ins companies. However, you must consider that their operating costs are 16%, a great deal of which is due to recent acquisitions.
Meanwhile, they are sitting on $59 billion in assets, $24 billion of which are Cash and Equivalents, while their Contractual Obligations are currently only $3 billion.
They are making plenty of money, while declining plenty of patients.
@s067239005:
Depends on what you mean. Again, IMHO, what has been considered the upper middle class: professionals are doing well because they are fewer and in more demand. But the CEO’s and, the financial people, etc. eating everyone’s lunches. Our society can’t afford a class of bloated, mostly harmful parasites any longer. It’s time to take care business. The world does owe anyone a seven or eight figure income.
good point but what you should take into account is one of the reasons upper levels are fine and prospering is because the lower levels are doing so poorly.
I might add there’s lower unemployment at those levels because, in many cases, there’s a tighter market because they’re are fewer of them who can do what they can. An engineer could take over my job. I can’t do an engineer’s job. What you gonna do?
@danger
This is the fault of Walmart??? If the government didn’t put it out there for their own purposes, then Walmart wouldn’t use it to their advantage. There certainly should be less government all around!!!! Survival of the fittest!!
Reality is a bitch. But there’s higher demand for what people at those income levels are selling than what we people at the lower levels are selling–I’m not $12,000 or below. But I’m an unskilled dinosaur. The problem is some people at the very top levels do nothing that is of any or much real benefit.
That is because it IS the fault of those who are running the system. THEY are the ones who are sucking up all the money, THEY are running the ponzi schemes that are dirivitives, THEY are the ones who are doing it.
Everybody who is not wealthy is getting screwed. The top 1% own more than the bottom 75%. The top 400 families own more than the bottom 55%. All the money is being sucked up by the uberwealthy.
@ladylordess Walmart do all this with government subsidies. And without Walmart, there would be a dozen smaller stores selling exactly the same stuff, employing more workers.
@1000Demons Of course the jobs at Wal-Mart are lower wage jobs, it isn’t exactly rocket science. You can work there, and still afford to live, plus have health insurance. The best part?? Wal-mart is able to do this without a UNION!! This is America and we have to stop thinking like we don’t live in the same waters.
Yes, BETTER!!!! Cheney is the type of person who WILL get the job done. BHO is he type of person who TALKS about getting the job done, with a VP who takes credit for getting the job done, when actually he was against the surge in the first place!!!!
@ladylordess: you slept BETTER at night with him in charge?
Under his rule, more terrorist attacks happened.
9/11 happened and then Bush/Cheney’s either highly corrupt or highly bungled countrerattack (Iraq! Let’s surprise them! Let’s attack the WRONG country!) incited more attacks (London and Madrid, both while Bush and Cheney were in office).
Remind me: what exactly did they do to make you sleep better at night?
@ladylordess: Sure, I agree that Wal-Mart does give poor people jobs, and prices are cheaper, but the pay is low, so the poor stay poorer.
It’s great that there are those like Gates who donate to education, but it’s also from such budgets that cuts are more readily made. Thus the system stays broken.
Try pouring water into a cup with a hole in it. It doesn’t work, does it?
I agree it’s better to teach someone to fish, but only if everyone has the same waters to fish in.
FIX THE SYSTEM
This is true.
Welcome to the working poor…
This is what the middle-class gets for allowing this bullshit to go on, so they could enjoy their mediocre earnings.
Fuck anyone who sucks the balls of the rich.
Funny how you mentioned all American items as if you’re jealous or something. Tommy Hilfinger an American success, Blizzard Entertainment another American success, Fast food? McDonalds (NYSE:MCD) another American hit coming to a middle east country near you.
When it comes to marketing new products and new ideas America is awesome.
Palin will not be president because Obama has destroyed that possibility. Palin will push her influence from outside of Washington.
Have you ever heard of the saying; It takes money to make money.
I can invest money in the right places including dumping it in venture capital or even a partnership. I can also invest in the market to make additional money to pay my employees. If youre a business owner and you cheated and lied your business partners and employees would know exactly who you are.
The name is very handy for instantly making a Lib your enemy. No confusion, no wasted time!
Your post proves the value of the market. Companies that do stupid things, go out of business. ( at least they used to!). So, in the long run, most companies are doing smart things, or the die. As a retired mgr of corps with around 50 employees, it is extremely common for employees to believe they were smarter than me. I wasnt prefect, but in general, they arent smart enough to have a good judgement on what needed to be done.