GE Executive to Get $1 million a Year for Doing Nothing – Republicans Fight to Keep His Taxes from Going Up

Poor Man, A $5,000 a Month Increase in Taxes Would be Devastating

Retirement is a nice thing, but it is a really nice thing if you are a senior executive in corporate America.  GE is going to give a retiring executive $89,000 a month for the next ten years.  That’s right, for doing absolutely nothing this person will get a check every month for the next ten years at about twice the annual median family income.

As part of a deal to keep the veteran executive from joining a competitor for an unusually long three years, the conglomerate has agreed to pay Mr. Krenicki $89,000 a month until 2022.

The payment to Mr. Krenicki, who is 50 years old, was dubbed a retirement allowance by GE and is worth $1 million a year.

Oh yes, that’s right the individual has to agree not to go to work for a competitor for three years, meaning that after three years he can go to work for a competitor, collect that paycheck and still get $89,000 a month from his old job with whom he is now competing.

Now if GE wants to waste corporate assets that is certainly their choice.  But think about this situation in terms of public policy.  Republicans are leading the fight to not only keep the Bush era tax cuts, which would mean preventing a modest increase in Mr. Krenicki’s take home pay, but they want to cut the rate by 20%.  So Mr. Krenicki would get another $70,000 a year tax cut on top of what he already got from the Bush cuts.

Of course, as the Tax Policy Center learned, to make those cuts revenue neutral taxes would have to go up on working class people, the kind making $89,000 a year, not $89,000 a month.  But for Republicans that’s alright, those are not ‘their’ people.  As to why Mr. Krenicki deserves such an incredible retirement deal there is this.

"Mr. Krenicki's retirement terms reflect his senior position, long service and significant contribution to GE as well as our interest in receiving strong noncompete and nonsolicitation agreement protections," a GE spokeswoman said.

Right