Friday, June 23, 2006
Death Of The Middle Class: GOP's Finger On the Trigger
More evidence that the wonderful "Bush boom" is booming only for those at the very top of America's income pyramid:
Chief executives of U.S. corporations earned 262 times the pay of the average worker in 2005, the second-highest level in the 40 years the data's been kept, an economic research group said this week.
Last year, the average CEO was paid $10.9 million a year, or 262 times an average worker's earnings of $41,861, the Economic Policy Institute said Wednesday.
The research group also found a CEO earned more in one workday in 2005 than an average worker earned in 52 weeks.
The group includes salary, bonuses, stock options and other payments in its definition of CEO pay.
While the CEOs are doing great, the average American? Um, not so much:
Let's compare that to regular guys salary increases in this expansion. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average hourly pay for production workers was $14.79 in November 2001 (when this expansion began) and $16.62 in May 2006 for an increase of 12.37%. Over the same period the inflation gage increased from 177.4 to 202.5 for an increase of 14.14%. This means 80% of the population has seen their wages decrease 1.77% during this expansion.
At the same time, corporations are doing extremely well. According to the Federal Reserves Flow of Funds statement, corporate profits as a percentage of national income have increased from 8.5% in 2001 to 13.88% in the first quarter of 2006. Over the same period (2001 to the first quarter of 2006) corporations are the only economic sector to actually save any money. Their savings increased from $192.3 billion in 2001 to $606.3 billion in the first quarter of 2006. In other words, if corporations wanted to increase salaries beyond inflation, they clearly have the money to do so.
But of course, they aren't -- and America is suffering as a result:
But after 2000 something changed. The pace of productivity growth has been rising again, but now it seems to be lifting fewer boats. After you adjust for inflation, the wages of the typical American worker--the one at the very middle of the income distribution--have risen less than 1% since 2000. In the previous five years, they rose over 6%. If you take into account the value of employee benefits, such as health care, the contrast is a little less stark. But, whatever the measure, it seems clear that only the most skilled workers have seen their pay packets swell much in the current economic expansion. The fruits of productivity gains have been skewed towards the highest earners, and towards companies, whose profits have reached record levels as a share of GDP.
And yet the House Republicans just passed another bill designed to give the CEOs and companies even more money while further starving those government services that most benefit those of us who aren't CEOs or corporations.
http://phoenixwoman.blogspot.com/200...finger-on.html
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