Date posted: April 14, 2010 - Wednesday
Title: The economy and who's getting screwed
Current mood: Exasperated
Having been out of work for over three years now, money is always on my mind. So I was fascinated when my Sunday paper arrived with the Parade magazine section inside.
It was the annual "what people earn" issue. For those of you who may not get the Sunday paper, or your paper doesn't provide the Parade section, every year the magazine lists the yearly salary of people in different professions.
It's always interesting to see the huge amounts certain movie and TV stars make, and depressing to see how little is paid to people in professions which contribute far more to society.
This year's edition was more extensive than it has been in the past. The bad economy and the high unemployment probably sparked the increase in examples this year, but it was a brief sidebar story which caught my attention.
The article dealt with what is called the "income gap". This is the disparity between what the CEO of a company earns and what the average worker makes. And I think these statistics bear repeating and very wide distribution. So, for those of you who don't get the Sunday paper, or those whose paper doesn't provide the Parade section, I would like to repeat some the highlights from the article.
"In 1978, CEOs at the largest U.S. companies earned 35 times much as the average worker." This is a direct quote from the article.
Which means if the average worker was earning $25,000 a year, the CEO was making $875,000. And isn't that ridiculous on the face of it.
The article points out today the ratio is more than 300:1. That means if the average worker is making the same amount today ($25,000), the CEO would be making $7,500,000 or more.
So you say the average worker today wouldn’t be making the same amount. OK, take a look at this quote.
“From 1979 to 2009, after adjusting for inflation, the highest earners in the U.S. saw a dramatic growth in their earnings while the lowest earners now make less than they did 30 years ago.”
Yes that statistic deals with lowest earners and not the average worker, but I can’t imagine the average worker is doing much better.
The article points out countries which have a large gap between society’s rich and poor have higher rates of teen pregnancy, infant mortality, obesity, mental illness, drug use, imprisonment and homicide. Does that sound familiar when you listen to the stories making national news in the U.S.?
There are some programs which ameliorate the effects in earning gap in the U.S. (progressive income tax, Medicaid and welfare), but experts say we should do more. There are foreign countries which spend 7% or 8% of their national income on social programs for working-age people, but the U.S. only spends about 2%. And experts believe there is little chance of a change in this country because most Americans still believe people get ahead in life by virtue of their own efforts.
I can see where people believe this because you see the ‘heart warming’ stories on the news all the time about the guy or girl who has worked hard and succeeded. I just think those stories are the exception rather than the rule. Maybe this mess in our current economy will let people see it’s a fallacy. And maybe the continued coverage of the callousness of Wall Street and bankers who caused this mess and continue to profit after being bailed out will be a wake up call for the average American. We can only hope.
Besides the information in the Parade I also looked at the want ads in the classified section in my Sunday paper; although section may be a misnomer these days. It was more like a want ad page. Yep you could take all the ads for jobs and list them on a single page if you eliminated the large display advertisements from individual companies. There hasn’t been more than a page or two of job listings in the paper in months.
On the front of that section of the paper each week there is a column by someone in the employment industry giving tips on job seeking. I’ve read those before and find them to be mostly bullshit. For the most part these advice columns repeat ideas I have heard for years and which I haven’t found to work. And they seem to be written to convince people they have to approach a potential employer on their knees like a serf would approach a Lord in the middle ages.
The article this week talked about how you have to be circumspect in your private life. In particular it preached against social media: yes, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
It recommended not posting any pictures of your self that might show you in an unflattering light (no wild partying), not writing any blogs about subjects that could be considered controversial (no politics, no religion, no social hot button issues) and to generally be bland. It did say if you had to use social media you should post pictures of yourself involved in charitable activities or doing volunteer work.
I have always had a real problem with employers who believed they had a say in what I did on my personal time. And I have known a few of them. As long as I do the work I’m supposed to on company time, what I do on my own time is none of their business; and damn well nothing they should be able to control.
But this article warns employers these days investigate your personal life and your online activities as another measure of whether or not they should hire you.
My question is why in the world would you want to work for a company which feels they have the right to control your total life in return for paying you a wage that barely allows a life outside the company in the first place.
I’m not sure when we’ll come out of this recession. I don’t totally believe a lot of the “it’s all getting better” stories I am seeing in the paper and on television. Unemployment is still high, interest rates seem to be going up and a lot of the economic indicators jump up and down from month to month instead of remaining steady or improving.
What I hope is we’ve learned something and will finally address some of the inequities in
