Saturday, October 29, 2011

Why Occupy? The Wage Disparity Edition

Just one of the many, many reasons the Occupy movement has launched around the world is that the working class is getting tired of being stepped on by the greedy.

Case in point, take a look at the disparity in wage growth that has occurred:

Chart courtesy of Economic
Policy Institute


From 1997 to 2010, most of us saw an average of a 5% increase in our wages.

In the same time span, the top 1% saw their pay increase by 224% and the top 0.1% saw their money go up by an average of 390% or nearly four times.  

That's not being anti-capitalistic. That's being anti-greed and anti-plutocracy.

3 comments:

  1. The workers, the people that are getting things done, are being viewed only "expenses."

    Reducing "business expenses" (labor) is how the management, owners, and others in the top tier make their bank.

    From all ranges, too, not just Wall Street, but even the millionaire kids and grandkids in some of our own "local family" businesses think this way (labor is just a "cost.")

    Occupy!

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  2. Yesterday on NPR's Morning Edition I heard a short interview with Rep. Paul Ryan. He was asked about the growing wage inequity and he completely avoided answering. He said that the problem was "uncertainty". How does "uncertainty" explain or excuse corporate greed and the need for record profits? How does "uncertainty" explain the need for corporate CEO's to grow their salaries and golden parachutes while they lay off thousands of workers? I would love for someone to get Paul Ryan to explain that to me and the rest of the American public.

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  3. "Uncertainty" seems to be the Repubican keyword for the second half of the month.

    For example:

    Cline, I mean, Gogebic Taconite will hold potential jobs hostage over the state Republicans, I mean, they have so many jobs they want to bring to the state just to help us out.

    But they won't "invest" in our state unless the "uncertainty" in the time it takes for our government to do its job is put on the fast-track.

    ReplyDelete