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Income Inequality Plummeting Thanks To....... George Bush
According to this article that bases its figures on information from the unions AFL-CIO, the average CEO to worker pay ratio had plummeted by 50% since Bush took office (the info covers from 1980 through 2009). While I'm sure there is a bit of spin in this article as it comes from a right wing source, there is most likely some truth in it as well.
Since the first Occupy Wall Street protest, you haven't been able to swing a dead cat in this country without hitting an Obama-loving media member carping and whining about income inequality.
Yet according to this chart created by the nation's largest federation of trade unions the AFL-CIO, the difference between average CEO and average worker pay has been plummeting since the year 2000:
As you can see, the real explosion in income inequality happened in the '90s as stock prices went through the rough during the tech bubble.
Yet from 2000 through 2009, this disparity actually declined by 50 percent.
To assist in furthering the point, NewsBusters member Gary Hall has added to the AFL-CIO's chart:
In reality, the real creator of income inequality in recent decades was - wait for it!- Bill "I Feel Your Pain" Clinton.
You remember the media complaining in 2000 when the average CEO was making 525 times the average worker?
No, I don't either.
But the best is still to come because the president that radically narrowed this disparity in pay was - wait for it again! - George W. Bush!
Despite this narrowing, Bush is depicted as a pawn of the wealthy and enemy of the common man.
With this data from the AFL-CIO, maybe he should be the Occupy movement and its media minions' hero rather than their goat.
Additionally, since this income disparity exploded under Clinton, maybe his fans in the press should reconsider their love for the economy of the '90s.
Unless, of course, income inequality really doesn't matter if it can't advance their liberal agenda.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by XLFD on
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I second Mr. Fitzgibbons, very interesting statistics directly from a liberal source (the AFL-CIO) which shows the income disparity explosion during the Clinton years. But can anyone check on what may have been the main cause of that? Was it NAFTA, et. al., another Clintonian policy, or something else.
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Permalink Reply by Willy on
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R.Larry Fitzgibbons
The 5 main reasons for the Depression were, the stock market crash, bank failures, reduction in purchasing, American economic policy with Europe and drought conditions in the U.S. and not income inequality.
I have to disagree with your conclusions as well as the article. The negatives of wealth distribution that you are describing may hold true for socialist controlled countries but not for a country that has a true form of capitalism. If one starts from scratch in creating an economy in a free enterprise country and divides all of the wealth evenly the outcome would be the same. There will be a minority who have accumulated more wealth than the average citizen because of a difference in personalities, risk taking and economic intelligence. However the difference with capitalism and socialist types of government is that the wealth collected in capitalism is recycled back into the economy. Wealthy people do not stuff their money in a mattress or bury it in the back yard. They either purchase high end goods, services, real estate and products or put their money back into investments which then get redistributed by those holding that wealth. So the type of outcomes you describe do not apply to free economic systems. Your example at the end of you post is only a small part of what happens in an evolving free enterprise system that allows for entrepreneur investing because it demonstrates fluctuations in the economy due to innovations and expansions into other markets because of competition for cheaper wages and expenses, less regulations and a desire for the public to get a bargain no matter where the products are manufactured. Disparities in income is a false indicator in a Capitalistic economy and has nothing to do with economic health because like any society there will always be those that strive for a higher economic level. In a socialist society such as the old USSR their existed a ruling class and a controlled class of people. The ruling class had all the wealth and did nothing with that wealth to energize their economy. Most of that wealth was invested in foreign markets and not circulated in USSRs economic system, so saying that income disparities are a negative in a Capitalistic society makes no sense. Income inequality is a propaganda term used by Socialists to promote their agendas which are to overturn Capitalism and to enact a type of punishment on successful individuals who have more wealth than they have. All of which are triggered by envy and jealousy and a lack of ambition.
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Larry
The 5 reasons for the Great depression are not symptoms, they are the causes. Symptoms are indicators of a condition while causes are the reason for the condition. A fever and headache are symptoms of a cold but the virus that triggers the cold is the cause. Again I must disagree with some of your statements.
1. "Now, as then, too much wealth in the hands of too few people contributes to the inability of the general masses of people to pay their outstanding loans."If a person had the ability to take out a loan then he must have the income to pay it back unless he is no longer working or just borrowed more than he can pay back. This has nothing to do with someone having more money than the person with the loan.
2. "If the overly-compensated CEO's would have leveled the playing field by paying their workers more fairly, then maybe some people would not have defaulted on their loans and mortgages, and maybe those banks might not have failed."Again, the person with the mortgage and loans was supposedly making enough money to qualify for the mortgage or loan so what does this have to do with an "overly-compensated CEO?
3. "reduction in purchasing power" was caused in part because "The “Roaring Twenties” weren’t roaring for everyone. By 1929, 1% of Americans controlled 40% of the wealth in this country.""I previously posted the example that 1 person with a million dollar average salary is not going to purchase as many common goods and services as 20 people with $50,000 average annual wage. This has a double effect in that (1) less common goods and services purchased creates less demand, and (2) less demand creates fewer jobs."You do understand that the person earning a million dollars is the one who employs the 20 people you are referring to. If that million dollar earner had decided not to start the company where the 20 people are employed then they wouldn't even have the $50,000 average wage.
It's obvious that you are a socialist who thinks that people should be limited in how much money a person can keep after they have earned it. In your system those 20 workers would not have any incentive to try and earn a million dollars for themselves because you don't think they deserve it, so we will end up with a stagnant socialist economy much like our Communists friends. Socialism has been tried all over the World and has been proven to be a miserable failure. Your following the Obama, occupy propaganda rhetoric. Obama is a divider of people. If he stays in power he is going to be the cause of a new American revolution and it's sad that so many people who do not take the time to learn about Capitalism and the pitfalls of Socialism are just blindly falling in line behind the radical revolutionaries that occupy the White House.
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I guess I'll have the last word then. A company hire's a CEO to perform a job. Most salaries for that position are set via a contract. If a CEO is able to save a company millions of dollars then most of the time he will receive extra compensation for his work. I see nothing wrong with that. The company can pay whatever they want. I'm sure you would turn down a million dollars if your boss offered it to you. I'm not sure what your point is regarding Whitehall, the car ferry, etc. because decisions about how to maintain companies are made everyday and of course there will be economic consequences when decisions are made regarding employment, restructuring, relocating, reinvesting, wages & benefits and a myriad of management considerations regarding a company's existence. That is what makes free enterprise work. So what would you expect them to do?
Your story about Henry Ford is a perfect example of Capitalism and free enterprise at work. He made his decision according to his business sense and what he could afford to pay his employees and still make a profit. Do you begrudge him for making millions off the backs of his workers. What do you think Mr. Ford should have given his employees? $6 a day? $10 a day? Why not $50 a day. He was the ultimate CEO. He made tons of money sitting in his office while the workers toiled for a measly $5 a day. It's a good thing capitalism was alive back then because if socialism was the economic force during Mr. Ford's reign there would not be a Ford Motor Company today that employs 189,000 workers.
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"I guess I'll have the last word then." LOL, way to take the advantage, Willy.
But I think you may be a little hard on R. Larry in calling him a Socialist. His views would fall more in line with the Keynesian view, which can lead to socialistic policies, but I would not label all Keynesians as socialists... at least early on in an argument.
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Now who's calling people names. See Larry, it's possible to be many things but I still think your a socialist which, believe it or not, is not a dirty word. Hillary would be proud to wear the label. Like my grandpa used to say " call me anything you want but don't call me late for supper", or my nooky time with grandma.
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R. Larry,
No such 'ignore' feature exists. If you get a pack of wolves or just an annoying gnat that continues to pester you, you will have to deal with it on your own terms and with your own arguments. If someone goes beyond the terms of service in the bottom, let me know. But if someone gets on your nerves about a topic, argue your side, then wait a little and they just may be your ally on another topic.
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Larry
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
What do you mean by unfair?
Depends on the type of work, the seniority and competence of the persons involved.
Yes
No
Let me add one thing. The U.S. could turn the trade deficit around in one week, keep and restore American jobs, reduce individual taxes, add billions to the treasury to reduce or eliminate the deficit and eliminate unemployment. Those and other benefits could be realized if we the citizens want to correct what's wrong in America but It's all up to us. All we have to do is buy American made products. A simple choice that we refuse to do. We're all looking for that cheap bargain made possible by foreign slave labor.
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By unfair do you mean the entire law, portions of the law, what specifically are you referring to. It would help if you could post a link to the law since I am not familiar with it's details.
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Willy can respond to this question as per his view, but I would say that minimum wage laws (set by either the state or feds) are unfair on their face. When the state arbitrarily sets the floor for wages, rather than have natural economic factors like 'supply and demand' do so, they put an unfair burden on the employer, and wind up hurting the unskilled laborer, who may find himself out of a job due to his work productivity being below the level where his job pays for itself.
To deny them the freedom to negotiate their own wages and to leave them legally prohibited from working is a moral outrage. The aggregate increase of income by all workers by a minimum wage increase, is typically offset by the unemployment of others that are most needy whose positions are cut for business survival.
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X
One could look at Larry's questions for a week and not have a definitive answer. Unfair being what? unfairly applied, unfairly ratified, unfairly drafted, unfairly compromised to or about, unfair that the law exists, unfair to the economy, unfair to trade, unfair to unions, unfair to public sector employers, unfair to public sector employees, unfair to new "legal immigrants, unfair to migrant workers, unfair to private sector workers, unfair to private sector employers, unfair to contract employees, unfair to self employed individuals, unfair to part time workers, unfair to full time workers, unfair to the Constitution, unfair to free enterprise, unfair to capitalism, unfair legally, unfair to non socialists, unfair to fascists, unfair to Democrats, unfair to Republicans, unfair to the to the fair haired, unfair to orphaned elephants, unfair to silly questions, what? I'm glad you understand such an open ended question.
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