Assignment task:
What is the primary tone of the paragraph? In 2000, John Welch of General Electric paid himself $144 million, while also receiving millions of dollars' worth of perks, such as a company-paid home and a private box in the stadium where the Boston Red Sox play. When Welch left General Electric in 2001, the firm granted him a pension of $9 million annually, plus lifetime use of a corporate jet, an extravagant Manhattan apartment, and such absurd extras as permission to send his liquor bills to the company. Hundreds of average General Electric employees were laid off-some of their lives ruined-to fund Welch's carnival of greed. And greed it was in every sense, since Welch avidly grabbed from others but gave almost nothing away. Papers filed by Welch himself in a divorce proceeding declared that he had a net worth of $456 million but donated a mere $3 million annually to charity. This is a miser's sum, since $456 million conservatively invested would yield around $20 million annually, allowing Welch to give away much more while still living in opulence and not touching his principal.