It just doesn’t make sense. Can someone please explain to me how this works? Microsoft posted a $4.17 billion quarterly profit for the four months ending in December 2008. It’s down 11% from the quarter before. In response to this ‘huge’ decline in profit Microsoft announced the axing of 5 000 jobs.

It seems to me that the global economic turmoil is still hitting the ordinary folk and that the seriously overpaid top echelon in companies continues to float along merrily. I bet Steve Ballmer didn’t lose his job?

As CEO of Microsoft he has managed to arrange such a lovely little salary package for himself that he is ranked the 43rd richest person in the world with an estimated wealth of $15 billion. He started working for Microsoft in 1980 and was appointed CEO in 2000.  Some pay package that.

And then they fire 5 000 folk who really depend on their salaries. Sickening. Unless of course I’m missing the point here. Maybe CEO’s deserve these kinds of packages because after all they make the company happen. They are the ones who lead their companies to great wealth and without them there wouldn’t really be any jobs.

So they say. But then lets have a look at some CEOs who haven’t done such a fabulous job, but still earned the mega bucks. A great article in Huffington Post yesterday discussed the folk that have post graduate degrees in the Marie Antoinettes School of ‘let them eat cake’ attitude. Remember her famous words when the ordinary people were starving? No bread? Eat cake…

John Thain, CEO of Merrill Lynch spent $1.2 million on refurbishing his office at the very time his company was preparing to lay off thousands of employees.  He himself asked for a $10 million bonus as the US government was assisting with the bailout.

When he didn’t get any of that, I wonder why, he still managed to pay his senior executives $4 billion in bonuses at the same time the US taxpayers and Bank of America was pumping in money to keep the company going.

There are more of these little examples of CEOs who have totally lost touch with reality. We are not even going to mention the Detroit execs who flew on private jets to ask for huge loans. Or the AIG execs and their little half a million Dollar week-end party at the US tax payers expense. Is nobody complaining?

Citigroup, which received $45 billion in government bailout funds has just taken delivery of a $50 million corporate jet that has some fabulous features such as leather seats, entertainment centre and some other rather expensive little perks. What is with this?

And governments are continuing to bailout these companies because they are concerned that at the end of the day the ordinary office or factory worker is the one who is going to be worse off, not the CEOs. Governments are trying to protect the jobs for the rank and file.

But it doesn’t make much difference does it. The ordinary worker is still losing his job. Look at Detroit. Car manufacturers are shedding jobs, while CEOs are still flying around in their corporate jets. Only now they have a mere two to chose from, rather than five, the poor dears.

What is wrong with this picture? And whose money is bailing out the company’s with their seriously overpaid CEOs? The ordinary people’s tax money. After all the CEO’s have the money and resources to pay clever accountants to ensure that their tax burden is as low as possible. Something the little guys can’t do, so they end up paying a higher proportion of their income to the tax man.

Just to summarise then.  The ordinary worker earns at the level of basic subsistence. On these meager earnings he pays proportionally much more tax than the high earners. For the privilege of earning a pittance and paying huge tax on it, his job is the first to get cut.  Can he win? Not in this system, that’s for sure.