Free Market Economy

Kevin Drum points out a story in today's LATimes which demonstrates just how far out of whack our economy has become:

When the airline industry went into a deep slump after the 2001 terrorist attacks, American Airlines' pilots, flight attendants and mechanics agreed to billions of dollars in cuts in wages and benefits to keep the carrier afloat.

Now AMR Corp., American's parent, is back in the black, so much so that 874 top executives will receive more than $150 million in stock bonuses next week.

As for the 57,000 rank-and-file employees, they're seeing red.

"We made huge sacrifices," said Dana Davis, an 18-year American employee and spokeswoman for the Assn. of Professional Flight Attendants.

The airline's 18,000 attendants took an across-the-board 16% pay cut and gave up vacation days. "We're not getting anything back for it," Davis said.

This isn't a new story by any means but it does a good job of showing the ridiculousness of our CEO-worship. For 2006, executive compensation averaged at least 400 times that of workers.

Of course, American has its justification:

For its part, American says the executive bonuses, part of a stock-based performance share plan, are necessary to retain managers. And, the airline says, it's a logical way to reward managers for turning American around. The carrier was one of the few to avoid bankruptcy.

Seeing how important those executives are I guess they could run the airline without any employees at all.

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