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Income inequality in America has been growing rapidly, and is expected to increase [PDF]. While the widening wealth gap is a hot topic in the media and on the campaign trail, there's quite a disconnect between the perceptions of economists and those of the general public.
For instance, surveys show people tend to underestimate the income disparity between the top and bottom 20% of Americans, and overestimate the opportunity for poor individuals to climb the social ladder. Additionally, a majority of adults believe that corporations conduct business fairly despite evidence to the contrary and that the government should not act to reduce income inequality.
Even though inequality is increasing, Americans seem to believe that our social and economic systems work exactly as they should. This perspective has intrigued social scientists for decades. My colleague Andrei Cimpian and I have demonstrated in our recent research that these beliefs that our society is fair and just may take root in the first years of life, stemming from our fundamental desire to explain the world around us.
http://theconversation.com/lifes-not-fair-so-why-do-we-assume-it-is-45981
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:19PM
Western civilizations have economic inequality since their very [inceptions]
The Shakers (starting before the American Revolution), The Paris Commune of 1871, Barcelona in 1936 - 1937, Mondragon since 1956, the village of Marinaleda in Spain, and thousands of worker cooperatives across northern Italy all say that you are painfully ignorant in assuming that gross economic inequality is a natural and necessary state of affairs.
400 years
You have forgotten centuries of Feudalism and the slave economies which preceded that.
400:1
You left out Larry Ellison, with whom it was 5000:1.
sec-approves-rule-on-ceo-pay-ratio
Window dressing. Nothing fundamentally changed.
The corps simply have to add that line to their reports.
...and the ruling should have included compensation for members of the boards of directors as well.
In Switzerland, OTOH, they had a referendum that would have capped the ration at 12:1.
A well-played propaganda campaign by the elites convinced Swiss workers to vote against themselves.
The line about USAians seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires (often attributed to John Steinbeck) seems to apply to the Swiss as well.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:27PM
That you can reel off a list of vanishingly small localized exceptions means nothing.
None of those tiny minority groups count as a civilization. They are merely aberrations in time.
Could it be, that a CEO that earns more than 12:1 really doesn't hurt the average worker at all?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @08:38PM
> Could it be, that a CEO that earns more than 12:1 really doesn't hurt the average worker at all?
Could it be, that chickens really fly out of my butt?
Absolutely. Nothing is impossible because quantum uncertainty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 10 2015, @09:43PM
vanishingly small
In 2006, Mondragon enterprises employed 16% of total employment in Gipuzkoa and a [3.8]% of the whole Basque Country [wedreambusiness.org]
8100 worker cooperatives across Emilia-Romagna is 30 percent of that region's economy.
Your definition of "small" is different than mine.
...or would a 30 percent pay cut be just fine with you?
localized exceptions
When it comes these days, change is a bottom-up phenomena.
(We've already tried top-down; that is showing itself to be a bigger failure with each passing day.)
None of those tiny minority groups count as a civilization
If you walked into one of those places and spouted off with that, I'm betting you would come out with a fat lip.
doesn't hurt
Since they went to the trouble of getting a referendum on the ballot, clearly, a significant number of folks think it does.
-- gewg_