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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (49612)	6/9/2004 1:04:58 PM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793640

class envy Envy is part of being human LB. And humans don't look at their absolute situation -- they compare themselves to the Joneses on TV. The increasing GDP has gone almost exclusively to the top 10%. CEOs today are getting paid 400 times their average worker's salary versus 40 times back in the fifties. The Gini index, which measures family income distribution inequality, is at record levels in the US, and the highest by far among developed countries. cia.gov

To: LindyBill who wrote (49612)	6/9/2004 9:50:55 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793640

This is an effort to build "class envy," in a country with no "classes." Get a grip. Of course you've classes in your society. They're the means of advancement. The correct thing Kyros should be looking at is reasons for less participation in class mobility. There are reasons there's not enough competition for upper management positions and thus the stupidly high pay folk get compared to their employees. Let's guess. At least 20% of the population in our countries, for reasons of bad positioning, bad education, poor attitude, whatever, are performing extremely far away from levels they're capable of attaining. Our general prosperity suffers as a result and those of least accomplishment suffer most. Let me be clear. I don't think poorer folk are poor because they deserve it for whatever specious reason psuedo-Darwinists put forward this week. Nonetheless, there are reasons for this lack of accomplishment, and thus low prosperity, that have nothing to do with moral arguments and a lot to do with facts on the ground. An example: Many young folk with deficient backgrounds but native intelligence join the armed forces because these institutions have high expectations of good performance in ethical and material spheres and will provide reasonable training and education. These things are lacking in various degrees in the places they came from. Low expectations and deficient education and training are reasons for the increasing income gap. I believe ghastly economic policies - which aren't the same ones Kyros is thinking of - are much less significant reasons for the increasing gap. I can't think of a particular economic reason which dictates that in times of economic growth the gap between high and low earners should increase except, perhaps, temporarily towards the beginnning of the upward move out of recession. But once increasing prosperity is well under way shortage of workers will push pay upwards. I take it back, workers in mature or senescent industries or in those which don't create large value added, might find the gap increasing with respect to those in new ones and in industries with large value added.