Why do wealthy corporations fire poorly performing employees but not bad corporate officers?
That question is probably more important and relevant than trying to find yet another rationalization for attacking the middle class. That articles like this appear on HN at all is an embarrassment.
At most Silicon Valley companys I've worked at, anything less than excellent performance resulted in executives losing their position - the equivalent of being "fired" (In some rare cases those executives stayed with the company in a reduced role, but that was rarely the case - who wants to go from Senior VP of marketing to manager of technical publications - and the requisite $500K+ year of compensation to $125K)
On the flip side, as long as the line employee was performing reasonably adequately - they were rarely fired. Only those who were performing abysmally were part of the typical 10% annual churn.
Your experience may be different, but, that was mine.
I've seen the opposite far more than what you are implying.
It is a lot easier for the board to fire the execs, once you get to C-level it is practically a revolving door (and why a lot of them have contracts).
Let me tell you right now, the CEO of BP was not the one making bad decisions on the oil rig. He probably didn't have a clue about what was happening on any given day on any given rig considering they own thousands. But he was gone a heck of a lot faster than whoever it was that made the decisions that blew the place up and killed 11 people.
That question is probably more important and relevant than trying to find yet another rationalization for attacking the middle class.
The middle class doesn't consist completely of schoolteachers. In fact, it largely consists of families who are getting screwed over by a shitty public school system.
That question is probably more important and relevant than trying to find yet another rationalization for attacking the middle class. That articles like this appear on HN at all is an embarrassment.