I often enjoy the Daily Show for their dry humor on political subjects. On the other hand, when I see them covering a subject without cracking jokes, I know to take notice. This time the subject is how giant corporations steal from their employees’ pensions and health plan for executive compensation, and of course, Republicans stand in the way of protecting the workers.

I don’t think that this fact can be overemphasized as we have various corporate media and political pundits seek to minimize Occupy Wall Street: We are the richest nation in the world. There is a massive amount of wealth here, enough to keep each and every citizen living at a very comfortable level. The problem is that there is also a staggering income inequalityas well, more so than in some third world nations, like Trinidad and Tobago, Mozambique and Tunisia. Again, the richest nation in the world cannot serve its citizens as equitably as Mozambique. In a word: unacceptable.

One of the ways that Wall Street has caused this massive shift of wealth strictly to the top 1 percent is in the way corporations have decimated pension funds. Investigative journalist Ellen Schultz wrote the book Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers to illustrate how these corporations have pulled a reverse Robin Hood and robbed from the working poor to give yet even more to the rich. From the publisher’s description:

It’s no secret that hundreds of companies have been slashing pensions and health coverage earned by millions of retirees. Employers blame an aging workforce, stock market losses, and spiraling costs- what they call “a perfect storm” of external forces that has forced them to take drastic measures.

But this so-called retirement crisis is no accident. Ellen E. Schultz, award-winning investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, reveals how large companies and the retirement industry-benefits consultants, insurance companies, and banks-have all played a huge and hidden role in the death spiral of American pensions and benefits…

… [emphasis added]