CHOKING ON GAS PRICES AND EXECUTIVE PAY

I can tell you from travling to NC from Texas over the weekend had me thinking of buying a motorbike or staying home, because i just dont want to pay gas when its this high, just wait until summer...

GAS PRICES ARE up - way up - and for the first time it's costing me more than $40 to fill 'er up. Ouch.

This summer is supposed to be worse. Wanna see the future? Self-serve regular is now up to $4 a gallon in drive-happy Los Angeles.

The war in Iraq is among the factors that have driven the price of crude oil to more than $70 a barrel.

There's a notion that high prices will help curtail our use of gasoline and other oil products, improving the environment and lessening our dependence on foreign oil. That may be wishful thinking, since the oil companies seem to think that "alternative energy source" means a new place to drill for oil.

For working people who need cars to get to their jobs, high gas prices are a real hardship. SEPTA is geared to get people to jobs in Center City, but for years, job growth has been largely in the suburbs. That leaves tens of thousands who need to get to work where mass transit may be inconvenient or nonexistent.

High gas prices are like a tax that eats into workers' pay, leaving less to live on. A friend in sales spends $60 to fill her tank and can drive 300 miles a day visiting clients across the region. "I'd switch to a car with better mileage if I could, but I'd have to pay the dealer to take mine," she said.

Last fall, Lee Raymond, chairman of ExxonMobil, told Congress that gas prices were high because of global supply and demand. "We're all in this together, everywhere in the world," he said.

Not exactly. In 2005, ExxonMobil posted a profit of $36 billion, higher than any company ever.

Raymond himself made more than $51 million that year. That's nearly $1 million a week - more than $28,000 an hour for a 35-hour workweek. That breaks down further to $468 a minute, $7.80 a second - while some workers try to support their families on the $5.15 an hour minimum wage. So, $7.80 a second buys a little more than 2 ½ gallons of gas at $3 a gallon. No wonder Raymond doesn't worry about the price.

And when he retired at the end of last year, Raymond pocketed one of the largest retirement packages in corporate history, worth nearly $400 million.

Maybe you think Raymond deserves all that money, considering the huge profits the company made on his watch. But the company's success isn't the product of one person, or even a handful. Instead of handing him an almost inconceivable sum, why not give it out in bonuses to all the employees, or in rebates to consumers?
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/...n/14414595.htm