June 6, 2005
SUPPOSE THEY HAD A PLUTOCRACY AND NOBODY COULD FIND IT
The Mobility Myth (Bob Hebert, New York Times, June 6th, 2005)
The war that nobody talks about - the overwhelmingly one-sided class war - is being waged all across America. Guess who's winning.A recent front-page article in The Los Angeles Times showed that teenagers are faring poorly in a tight job market because of the fierce competition they're getting from older workers and immigrants for entry-level positions.
On the same day, in the business section, the paper reported that the chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9 percent raise that the average California worker saw last year.
The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote, "It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind is not widely known."
Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000.
Surely even Marx would be embarrassed by this one.
How do the top 100 CEOs stack up against the top 100 media figures?
Posted by: Daran at June 7, 2005 3:13 AMI'm wondering if some of the increase in the spread of American incomes isn't actually due to an excess of prosperity. The difference in volume levels of car stereos has become much higher in the last ten years, not because car stereo sales have become less fair, but because they have become so cheap that most people have all they want. Similarly, a bigger income distribution may be in part because those who really care can get plenty, and those who don't don't have to stay close to that level to have a decent living.
Posted by: Mike Earl at June 7, 2005 11:18 AMMr. Earl;
That's an interesting insight. I'm starting my own business and had to seriously consider the tradeoffs between building a business that would ramp up or one that would provide me with a comfortable lifestyle for relatively little work without big growth potential. I chose the latter, because it will get me to the point where the marginal utility of more money is less than spending that time on other pursuits (like hanging with you guys). That point is a long way short of being in the top 0.01%.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at June 8, 2005 2:36 PM