Gambling magnate Sheldon Adelson more than held his own
against the stiff competition to be crowned the greediest American of 2012.
The essence of greed?
Simple. Greed amounts to taking more than you need when you already have enough
— and others don’t.
Who among us, by this
yardstick, rate as our greediest? Those who have the wherewithal to take
whatever they want — and deny others the basics they need.
In the United States today, unfortunately, we abound in these sorts of greedy people. Many of them dart in and out of the executive suites that sit high atop America’s most elegant corporate towers. Year in and year out, these greedy execs grab ungodly rewards for their own labor — and deny their employees anything close to decent compensation for theirs.
The Institute for
Policy Studies’ online weekly on excess and inequality, Too Much, has been compiling an annual list of
America’s top 10 greedy grabbers since 2008. The greediest of them all this
year? That turned out to be a particularly tough call.
After all, who’s
greedier: a fast-food corporation’s CEO who takes home over 500 times the
paycheck of his minimum-wage workers — while he’s lobbying whole-hog against a
minimum wage increase? Or a private-equity billionaire who specializes in
savaging worker pensions?
But this year’s
top-ranking Too Much greedy grabber of 2012, casino magnate
Sheldon Adelson, more than held his own against this stiff competition.
Adelson started 2012
as one of the world’s richest men. Forbes puts his
personal net worth at $20.5 billion. What can you do with
more than $20 billion? For starters, you can spend $150 million on an election.
Adelson did just that
in 2012. No American invested more in politicking this year than he did. The
79-year-old became, as Time magazine notes, “the public face of what critics cast as a
plutocrat class trying to buy U.S. elections.”
Get used to that face.
Adelson told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that
he plans to spend at least twice
as much on his favorite
candidates the next time around.
How does anyone get
rich enough to plop that much money on pols? The bulk of Adelson’s wealth comes
from the Las Vegas Sands, the world’s largest casino company. Adelson, the
Sands chief exec and top shareholder, essentially treats the company as his own
personal ATM. He even outsources to himself.
In 2009, for instance,
Adelson had his Sands empire rent corporate jets from two outside companies.
The controlling owner of the outside companies: Sheldon Adelson. The
transactions netted Adelson $7.45 million.
Just last month,
Adelson had the Sands
declare a special
dividend for stockholders. He’ll personally collect $1.2 billion from this
distribution — and pay only a 15 percent federal income tax on it. On January
1, with the likely expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts, the dividend tax rate
will jump from that 15 to 35 percent. The Sands dividend quickie will save
Adelson nearly a quarter-billion in taxes.
But the real key to
Adelson’s billions has to be his manic hostility to unions. His flagship casino, the
Venetian, currently operates as the only nonunion major casino in Las Vegas. Of
the 40,000 Sands workers worldwide, not one is working under a union contract. And
Adelson aims to keep things that way.
Last year, 130
security guards at Adelson’s new casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had a
different idea. They voted to organize a union. Adelson’s Sands management
predictably refused to recognize the union.
The National Labor
Relations Board subsequently found Sands
guilty of an unfair
labor practice and ordered the company to start bargaining. Sands chose instead
to start tying up the case in the federal courts.
The security guards
make $13 an hour. They think Adelson and his Sands empire can afford to share
some wealth. Adelson will willingly share nothing. Who could possibly expect
anything else — from 2012′s greediest American?
OtherWords columnist
Sam Pizzigati is an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow. His latest
book is The Rich Don’t
Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American
Middle Class.
You can read about the rest of the 10 greediest
Americans of 2012 at TooMuchOnline.org.
Distributed via OtherWords.org