A Sin and a Shame by Bob Herbert

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/31/opinion/31herbert.html?_r=1&hp
When corporations rule the world, as they do now, treacherous treatment of workers is the norm. Millions of workers have been exploited by corporations during this recession/depression, with many more being let go than was necessary. Those who were retained were kept in fear of losing their jobs, and given pay cuts and longer hours. Guess who is reaping the profits from the misery caused to the middle class? (Hint: it's not "trickling down") As Bob Herbert says in his column today, "Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy."

EXCERPT: Increases in the productivity of American workers are supposed to go hand in hand with improvements in their standard of living. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work. That’s how the economic pie expands, and we’re all supposed to have a fair share of that expansion.

Corporations have now said the hell with that. Economists believe the nation may have emerged, technically, from the recession early in the summer of 2009. As Professor Sum writes in a new study for the labor market center, this period of economic recovery “has seen the most lopsided gains in corporate profits relative to real wages and salaries in our history.”

Worker productivity has increased dramatically, but the workers themselves have seen no gains from their increased production. It has all gone to corporate profits. This is unprecedented in the postwar years, and it is wrong.

Having taken everything for themselves, the corporations are so awash in cash they don’t know what to do with it all. Citing a recent article from Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Professor Sum noted that in July cash at the nation’s nonfinancial corporations stood at $1.84 trillion, a 27 percent increase over early 2007. Moody’s has pointed out that as a percent of total company assets, cash has reached a level not seen in the past half-century.

Executives are delighted with this ill-gotten bonanza.