It’s hard to match Tesla in terms of its rapaciousness, but the other nine firms on the IPS’s “Terrible Ten” include some household names: T-Mobile, Netflix, Ford Motor Company, Metlife, and Darden Restaurants (owners of Olive Garden); a trio of energy companies (Nextera, Duke Energy, First Energy); and the shining star of the 2008 financial crisis, bailout baby AIG.
If we exclude Tesla and Elon from the roster (which, honestly, seems fair given Musk’s off-the-charts villainy), we’re talking about firms that have raked in more than $120 billion in profit over that five-year span, while handing executives more than $3 billion in compensation. Meanwhile the highest tax rate applied to any of these firms is merely 2.2 percent; three have had a negative tax rate for the study period.
What sort of innovations have these CEOs wrought from this well-remunerated period? T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert presided over the Sprint merger that led to $23.6 million in stock buybacks and 5,000 layoffs. Netflix’s Reed Hastings poured $15 billion in profit into jacking up subscription rates. Nextera Energy has devoted $10 million in dark money in a “ghost candidate scheme” to thwart climate change candidates. Darden Restaurants has been fighting efforts to raise the minimum wage. Metlife has been diverting government money meant to fund low-cost housing into other, unrelated buckraking ventures. And some First Energy executives from the study period are embroiled in a corruption scandal that’s so massive that even Musk might find it to be beyond the pale.