By Susan Holmberg and Mark Schmitt “The compensation of American executives—CEOs and their “C-suite” colleagues—has long been a matter of controversy, especially recently, as the wages of average workers have stagnated and economic inequality has moved to the center of…
AIR IMPACT
Recognition of AIR research, opinions, and people in the media and elsewhere
How business leaders turned into vampires
By Steve Denning “How did America—a country dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal—become one of the most unequal countries on the planet? Why do the nation’s leaders now spend so much of their time feeding at…
Why the economy doesn’t work for the 99%: Massive payouts to corporate stockholders
By Liz Iacobucci “Wondering what happened to America’s Middle Class? UMass Lowell professor William Lazonick has some numbers for you. Since 2004, top US corporations have paid 86% of their net income to stockholders through dividends and stock buybacks. Why that’s important: Money…
What would we do if we wanted to reduce America’s excessive repurchasing problem?
By Jared Bernstein “You’ve hopefully heard about, if not read, this revealing analysis by William Lazonick on the sharp rise in public corporations using their profits to boost their share price through stock buybacks as opposed to re-investment.”… [Click HERE to read…
Instant gratification
By Paul Roberts “A half-hour east of Seattle, not far from the headquarters of Microsoft, Amazon, and other icons of the digital revolution, reSTART, a rehab center for Internet addicts, reveals some of the downsides of that revolution.”… [Click HERE…
The Inequality ‘Smoking Gun’
By Auriandra “The benefits of increased productivity over the last 35 years have not gone to the middle class. So, where did they go? UMass’s William Lazonick identifies a key change made by the Reagan Administration – to date largely…
Class issues, not race, will likely seal the next election
By Joel Kotkin “Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and along the U.S.-Mexico border may seem to suggest that race has returned as the signature issue in American politics. We can see this already in the pages of mainstream media, with…
Time for reasonable curbs on stock buybacks
By Ted Kaufman (former U.S. Senator from Delaware) “Income inequality is a hot subject. The statistics are stark and undeniable; nobody really argues against the fact that the disparity of income between the top 1 percent and the rest of…
The bear in the room
By Richard Stavros “This China-based company is the owner of independently-chartered container ships. We are drawn to this stock because of its predictability. Their entire business is based around the long-term, fixed-rate time charters of 79 massive container ships.”… [Click…
The stock market may be shrinking, but it’s not broken
By Stephen Gandel “The stock market is shrinking, and that’s got an economics professor spooked. According to study published this week by Harvard Business Review, over 90% of the profits generated by companies in the S&P 500 over the past decade…
