Consumer Info
Consumer
dollars a year buying the heavily advertised (HA) brand products in the
grocery and department stores. There is nothing in the grocery or
department stores that is rocket science. Many of the less advertised
(LA) brands or store brands are just as good or better compared to the
HA brands. You are paying for the brainwashing that many HA brand
manufacturers put in their advertising campaigns. It is not difficult to
make shampoos, conditioners, cleaning products and all those other
products that can be found in your local grocery or department store.
Why are you paying 4+ dollars for baby shampoo when you can buy the less
advertised brand for half the money? Do you like wasting money? If the
HA brand products are better why would companies be spending billions of
dollars in advertising? The answer is that they are not better. They are
trying to convince you that the high price they are charging is some how
justified by a better product. If they were better they would not need
to do the massive advertising; social networking would sell the product.
Many times they are using terminology that means nothing. There is also
false claims being made by these manufacturers. There are no advertising
police. Even over the counter drugs like aspirin can be bought for half
the price of the HA brands. This is a product that has been around for
decades. The LA products are under the same FDA regulations as the HA
brands. Save a lot of money and don't buy the over priced HA brands.
When you pay the higher price for the HA brands you are paying for the
ridiculous high salaries of the CEO's, private jets, golden parachutes
and for the billions spent on advertising.
Every time you go to the store you can save several dollars. Over time
this can amount to a significant amount of money. Tell the managers in
the stores in which you shop that they need to carry more of the less
advertised brands. In many stores they have been doing this for the past
couple of years.
Get rid of those credit cards and use a debit card. By carrying a credit
card balance do you realize how much extra money you're spending? Don't
live your lift on plastic.
In case you're thinking of buying insurance see the following link.
http://law.freeadvice.com/insurance_law/insurers_bad_faith/ten-worst-insurance-companies.htm
Are you looking at food labels? Is it food or a chemistry set?
Some of the information might be a surprise to many people. The most
amazing numbers on income inequality come last, showing the change in
the ratio of the average CEO's paycheck to that of the average factory
worker over the past 40 years.
First, though, two definitions. Generally speaking, "wealth" is the
value of everything a person or family owns, minus any debts. However,
for purposes of studying the wealth distribution, economists define
wealth in terms of marketable assets, such as real estate, stocks, and
bonds, leaving aside consumer durables like cars and household items
because they are not as readily converted into cash and are more
valuable to their owners for use purposes than they are for resale
(Wolff, 2004, p. 4, for a full discussion of these issues). Once the
value of all marketable assets is determined, then all debts, such as
home mortgages and credit card debts, are subtracted, which yields a
person's net worth. In addition, economists use the concept of financial
wealth, which is defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied
housing. As Wolff (2004, p. 5) explains, "Financial wealth is a more
'liquid' concept than marketable wealth, since one's home is difficult
to convert into cash in the short term. It thus reflects the resources
that may be immediately available for consumption or various forms of
investments."
We also need to distinguish wealth from income. Income is what people
earn from wages, dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that
are paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a
great deal of wealth may or may not have high incomes, depending on the
returns they receive from their wealth, but in reality those at the very
top of the wealth distribution usually have the most income.
The Wealth Distribution
In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few
hands. As of 2004, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned
34.3% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial,
professional, and small business stratum) had 50.3%, which means that
just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the
wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of
financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the
top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.2%. Table 1 and
Figure 1 present further details drawn from the careful work of
economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2007).
Table 1: Distribution of net worth and financial wealth in the United
States, 1983-2004
Total Net Worth
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1983 33.8% 47.5% 18.7%
1989 37.4% 46.2% 16.5%
1992 37.2% 46.6% 16.2%
1995 38.5% 45.4% 16.1%
1998 38.1% 45.3% 16.6%
2001 33.4% 51.0% 15.6%
2004 34.3% 50.3% 15.3%
Financial Wealth
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1983 42.9% 48.4% 8.7%
1989 46.9% 46.5% 6.6%
1992 45.6% 46.7% 7.7%
1995 47.2% 45.9% 7.0%
1998 47.3% 43.6% 9.1%
2001 39.7% 51.5% 8.7%
2004 42.2% 50.3% 7.5%
Total assets are defined as the sum of: (1) the gross value of
owner-occupied housing; (2) other real estate owned by the household;
(3) cash and demand deposits; (4) time and savings deposits,
certificates of deposit, and money market accounts; (5) government
bonds, corporate bonds, foreign bonds, and other financial securities;
(6) the cash surrender value of life insurance plans; (7) the cash
surrender value of pension plans, including IRAs, Keogh, and 401(k)
plans; (8) corporate stock and mutual funds; (9) net equity in
unincorporated businesses; and (10) equity in trust funds.
Total liabilities are the sum of: (1) mortgage debt; (2) consumer debt,
including auto loans; and (3) other debt. From Wolff (2004 & 2007).
Figure 1: Net worth and financial wealth distribution in the U.S. in
2004
In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households
have 36.7% of all privately held stock, 63.8% of financial securities,
and 61.9% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock,
bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real
estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of
income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the
United States of America.
Table 2: Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2004
Investment Assets
Top 1 percent Next 9 percent Bottom 90 percent
Business equity 61.9% 28.4% 9.7%
Financial securities 63.8% 24.1% 12.1%
Trusts 47.7% 33.9% 18.5%
Stocks and mutual funds 36.7% 42.0% 21.2%
Non-home real estate 36.8% 42.6% 20.6%
TOTAL 50.3% 35.3% 14.4%
Housing, Liquid Assets, Pension Assets, and Debt
Top 1 percent Next 9 percent Bottom 90 percent
Deposits 20.8% 40.1% 39.1%
Pension accounts 13.5% 44.8% 41.7%
Life insurance 21.4% 36.0% 42.7%
Principal residence 9.8% 28.2% 62.0%
Debt 7.2% 19.9% 73.0%
TOTAL 2.2% 33.5% 54.3%
From Wolff (2007).
Figure 2a: Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2004: investment assets
Figure 2b: Wealth distribution by type of asset, 2004: other assets
Figures on inheritance tell much the same story. According to a study
published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6% of
Americans receive $100,000 or more in inheritance. Another 1.1% receive
$50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9% receive nothing (Kotlikoff
& Gokhale, 2000). Thus, the attempt by ultra-conservatives to eliminate
inheritance taxes -- which they always call "death taxes" for P.R.
reasons -- would take a huge bite out of government revenues for the
benefit of less than 1% of the population. (It is noteworthy that some
of the richest people in the country oppose this ultra-conservative
initiative, suggesting that this effort is driven by anti-government
ideology. In other words, few of the ultra-conservatives behind the
effort will benefit from it in any material way.)
For the vast majority of Americans, their homes are by far the most
significant wealth they possess. Figure 3 comes from the Federal Reserve
Board's Survey of Consumer Finances (via Wolff, 2007) and compares the
median income, total wealth (net worth, which is marketable assets minus
debt), and non-home wealth (which earlier we called financial wealth) of
White, Black, and Hispanic households in the U.S.
Figure 3: Income and wealth by race in the U.S.
Besides illustrating the significance of home ownership as a measure of
wealth, the graph also shows how much worse Black and Latino households
are faring overall, whether we are talking about income or net worth. In
2004, the average white household had 10 times as much total wealth as
the average African-American household, and 21 times as much as the
average Latino household. If we exclude home equity from the
calculations and consider only financial wealth, the ratios are more
startling: 120:1 and 360:1, respectively. Extrapolating from these
figures, we see that 69% of white families' wealth is in the form of
their principal residence; for Blacks and Hispanics, the figures are 97%
and 98%, respectively.
Historical context
Numerous studies show that the wealth distribution has been extremely
concentrated throughout American history, with the top 1% already owning
40-50% in large port cities like Boston, New York, and Charleston in the
19th century (Keister, 2005). It was very stable over the course of the
20th century, although there were small declines in the aftermath of the
New Deal and World II, when most people were working and could save a
little money. There were progressive income tax rates, too, which took
some money from the rich to help with government services.
Then there was a further decline, or flattening, in the 1970s, but this
time in good part due to a fall in stock prices, meaning that the rich
lost some of the value in their stocks. By the late 1980s, however, the
wealth distribution was almost as concentrated as it had been in 1929,
when the top 1% had 44.2% of all wealth. It has continued to edge up
since that time, with a slight decline from 1998 to 2004, before the
economy crashed in the late 2000s and little people got pushed down
again. Table 3 and Figure 4 present the details from 1922 through 2004.
Table 3: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United
States, 1922-2004.
Bottom 99 percent Top 1 percent
1922 63.3% 36.7%
1929 55.8% 44.2%
1933 66.7% 33.3%
1939 63.6% 36.4%
1945 70.2% 29.8%
1949 72.9% 27.1%
1953 68.8% 31.2%
1962 68.2% 31.8%
1965 65.6% 34.4%
1969 68.9% 31.1%
1972 70.9% 29.1%
1976 80.1% 19.9%
1979 79.5% 20.5%
1981 75.2% 24.8%
1983 69.1% 30.9%
1986 68.1% 31.9%
1989 64.3% 35.7%
1992 62.8% 37.2%
1995 61.5% 38.5%
1998 61.9% 38.1%
2001 66.6% 33.4%
2004 65.7% 34.3%
Sources: 1922-1989 data from Wolff (1996). 1992-2004 data from Wolff
(2007).
Figure 4: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the
United States, 1922-2004.
Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution
became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to
the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the
new financial wealth created by the American economy in that
21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went
to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only
6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during
the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).
The rest of the world
Thanks to a 2006 study by the World Institute for Development Economics
Research -- using statistics for the year 2000 -- we now have
information on the wealth distribution for the world as a whole, which
can be compared to the United States and other well-off countries. The
authors of the report admit that the quality of the information
available on many countries is very spotty and probably off by several
percentage points, but they compensate for this problem with very
sophisticated statistical methods and the use of different sets of data.
With those caveats in mind, we can still safely say that the top 10% of
the world's adults control about 85% of global household wealth --
defined very broadly as all assets (not just financial assets), minus
debts. That compares with a figure of 69.8% for the top 10% for the
United States. The only industrialized democracy with a higher
concentration of wealth in the top 10% than the United States is
Switzerland at 71.3%. For the figures for several other Northern
European countries and Canada, all of which are based on high-quality
data, see Table 4.Table 4: Percentage of wealth held by the Top 10% of
the adult population in various Western countries
country wealth owned by top 10%
Switzerland 71.3%
United States 69.8%
Denmark 65.0%
France 61.0%
Sweden 58.6%
UK 56.0%
Canada 53.0%
Norway 50.5%
Germany 44.4%
Finland 42.3%
The Relationship Between Wealth and Power
What's the relationship between wealth and power? To avoid confusion,
let's be sure we understand they are two different issues. Wealth, as
I've said, refers to the value of everything people own, minus what they
owe, but the focus is on "marketable assets" for purposes of economic
and power studies. Power, as explained elsewhere on this site, has to do
with the ability (or call it capacity) to realize wishes, or reach
goals, which amounts to the same thing, even in the face of opposition
(Russell, 1938; Wrong, 1995). Some definitions refine this point to say
that power involves Person A or Group A affecting Person B or Group B
"in a manner contrary to B's interests," which then necessitates a
discussion of "interests," and quickly leads into the realm of
philosophy (Lukes, 2005, p. 30). Leaving those discussions for the
philosophers, at least for now, how do the concepts of wealth and power
relate?
First, wealth can be seen as a "resource" that is very useful in
exercising power. That's obvious when we think of donations to political
parties, payments to lobbyists, and grants to experts who are employed
to think up new policies beneficial to the wealthy. Wealth also can be
useful in shaping the general social environment to the benefit of the
wealthy, whether through hiring public relations firms or donating money
for universities, museums, music halls, and art galleries.
Second, certain kinds of wealth, such as stock ownership, can be used to
control corporations, which of course have a major impact on how the
society functions. Tables 5a and 5b show what the distribution of stock
ownership looks like. Note how the top one percent's share of stock
equity increased (and the bottom 80 percent's share decreased) between
2001 and 2004.
Table 5a: Concentration of stock ownership in the United States,
2001-2004
Percent of all stock owned:
Wealth class 2001 2004
Top 1% 33.5% 36.7%
Next 19% 55.8% 53.9%
Bottom 80% 10.7% 9.4%
Table 5b: Amount of stock owned by various wealth classes in the U.S.,
2004
Percent of households owning stocks worth:
Wealth class More than $0 More than $5,000 More than $10,000
Top 1% 93.3% 93.2% 92.8%
95-99% 93.5% 92.7% 91.0%
90-95% 87.4% 85.6% 80.3%
80-90% 84.3% 77.0% 71.5%
60-80% 65.5% 54.4% 47.1%
40-60% 46.4% 28.7% 20.3%
20-40% 31.6% 13.4% 8.3%
Bottom 20% 12.2% 2.5% 1.1%
TOTAL 48.6% 36.4% 31.1%
Both tables' data from Wolff (2007). Includes direct ownership of stock
shares and indirect ownership through mutual funds, trusts, and IRAs,
Keogh plans, 401(k) plans, and other retirement accounts. All figures
are in 2004 dollars.
Third, just as wealth can lead to power, so too can power lead to
wealth. Those who control a government can use their position to feather
their own nests, whether that means a favorable land deal for relatives
at the local level or a huge federal government contract for a new
corporation run by friends who will hire you when you leave government.
If we take a larger historical sweep and look cross-nationally, we are
well aware that the leaders of conquering armies often grab enormous
wealth, and that some religious leaders use their positions to acquire
wealth.
There's a fourth way that wealth and power relate. For research
purposes, the wealth distribution can be seen as the main "value
distribution" within the general power indicator I call "who benefits."
What follows in the next three paragraphs is a little long-winded, I
realize, but it needs to be said because some social scientists --
primarily pluralists -- argue that who wins and who loses in a variety
of policy conflicts is the only valid power indicator (Dahl, 1957, 1958;
Polsby, 1980). And philosophical discussions don't even mention wealth
or other power indicators (Lukes, 2005). (If you have heard it all
before, or can do without it, feel free to skip ahead to the last
paragraph of this section)
Here's the argument: if we assume that most people would like to have as
great a share as possible of the things that are valued in the society,
then we can infer that those who have the most goodies are the most
powerful. Although some value distributions may be unintended outcomes
that do not really reflect power, as pluralists are quick to tell us,
the general distribution of valued experiences and objects within a
society still can be viewed as the most publicly visible and stable
outcome of the operation of power.
In American society, for example, wealth and well-being are highly
valued. People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have
interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure,
and to live long and healthy lives. All of these "values" are unequally
distributed, and all may be utilized as power indicators. However, the
primary focus with this type of power indicator is on the wealth
distribution sketched out in the previous section.
The argument for using the wealth distribution as a power indicator is
strengthened by studies showing that such distributions vary
historically and from country to country, depending upon the relative
strength of rival political parties and trade unions, with the United
States having the most highly concentrated wealth distribution of any
Western democracy except Switzerland. For example, in a study based on
18 Western democracies, strong trade unions and successful social
democratic parties correlated with greater equality in the income
distribution and a higher level of welfare spending (Stephens, 1979).
And now we have arrived at the point I want to make. If the top 1% of
households have 30-35% of the wealth, that's 30 to 35 times what we
would expect by chance, and so we infer they must be powerful. And then
we set out to see if the same set of households scores high on other
power indicators (it does). Next we study how that power operates, which
is what most articles on this site are about. Furthermore, if the top
20% have 84% of the wealth (and recall that 10% have 85% to 90% of the
stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity), that means that the
United States is a power pyramid. It's tough for the bottom 80% -- maybe
even the bottom 90% -- to get organized and exercise much power.
Income and Power
The income distribution also can be used as a power indicator. As Table
6 shows, it is not as concentrated as the wealth distribution, but the
top 1% of income earners did receive 17% of all income in the year 2003.
That's up from 12.8% for the top 1% in 1982, which is quite a jump, and
it parallels what is happening with the wealth distribution. This is
further support for the inference that the power of the corporate
community and the upper class have been increasing in recent decades.
Table 6: Distribution of income in the United States, 1982-2003
Income
Top 1 percent Next 19 percent Bottom 80 percent
1982 12.8% 39.1% 48.1%
1988 16.6% 38.9% 44.5%
1991 15.7% 40.7% 43.7%
1994 14.4% 40.8% 44.9%
1997 16.6% 39.6% 43.8%
2000 20.0% 38.7% 41.4%
2003 17.0% 40.8% 42.2%
From Wolff (2007).
The rising concentration of income can be seen in a special New York
Times analysis of an Internal Revenue Service report on income in 2004.
Although overall income had grown by 27% since 1979, 33% of the gains
went to the top 1%. Meanwhile, the bottom 60% were making less: about 95
cents for each dollar they made in 1979. The next 20% - those between
the 60th and 80th rungs of the income ladder -- made $1.02 for each
dollar they earned in 1979. Furthermore, the Times author concludes that
only the top 5% made significant gains ($1.53 for each 1979 dollar).
Most amazing of all, the top 0.1% -- that's one-tenth of one percent --
had more combined pre-tax income than the poorest 120 million people
(Johnston, 2006).
But the increase in what is going to the few at the top did not level
off, even with all that. As of 2007, income inequality in the United
States was at an all-time high for recent history, with the top 0.01% --
that's one-hundredth of one percent -- receiving 6% of all U.S. wages,
which is double what it was for that tiny slice in 2000; the top 10%
received 49.7%, the highest since 1917 (Saez, 2009).
A key factor behind the high concentration of income, and the likely
reason that the concentration has been increasing, can be seen by
examining the distribution of what is called "capital income": income
from capital gains, dividends, interest, and rents. In 2003, just 1% of
all households -- those with after-tax incomes averaging $701,500 --
received 57.5% of all capital income, up from 40% in the early 1990s. On
the other hand, the bottom 80% received only 12.6% of capital income,
down by nearly half since 1983, when the bottom 80% received 23.5%.
Figure 5 and Table 7 provide the details.
Figure 5: Share of capital income earned by top 1% and bottom 80%,
1979-2003 (From Shapiro & Friedman, 2006.)
Table 7: Share of capital income flowing to households in various income
categories
Top 1% Top 5% Top 10% Bottom 80%
1979 37.8% 57.9% 66.7% 23.1%
1981 35.8% 55.4% 64.6% 24.4%
1983 37.6% 55.2% 63.7% 25.1%
1985 39.7% 56.9% 64.9% 24.9%
1987 36.7% 55.3% 64.0% 25.6%
1989 39.1% 57.4% 66.0% 23.5%
1991 38.3% 56.2% 64.7% 23.9%
1993 42.2% 60.5% 69.2% 20.7%
1995 43.2% 61.5% 70.1% 19.6%
1997 45.7% 64.1% 72.6% 17.5%
1999 47.8% 65.7% 73.8% 17.0%
2001 51.8% 67.8% 74.8% 16.0%
2003 57.5% 73.2% 79.4% 12.6%
Adapted from Shapiro & Friedman (2006).
Another way that income can be used as a power indicator is by comparing
average CEO annual pay to average factory worker pay, something that
Business Week has been doing for many years now. The ratio of CEO pay to
factory worker pay rose from 42:1 in 1960 to as high as 531:1 in 2000,
at the height of the stock market bubble, when CEOs were cashing in big
stock options;. It was at 411:1 in 2005. By way of comparison, the same
ratio is about 25:1 in Europe. The changes in the American ratio are
displayed in Figure 6.
Figure 6: CEOs' pay as a multiple of the average worker's pay
It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the
salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay
increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers
gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage
actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account. These
startling results are illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7: CEOs' average pay, production workers' average pay, the S&P
500 Index, corporate profits, and the federal minimum wage, 1990-2005
(all figures adjusted for inflation)
Source: Executive Excess 2006, the 13th Annual CEO Compensation Survey
from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.
If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most
immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig
things so that the board of directors, which they help select -- and
which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit -- gives them
the pay they want. The trick is in hiring outside experts, called
"compensation consultants," who give the process a thin veneer of
economic respectability.
The process has been explained in detail by a retired CEO of DuPont,
Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., who is now chair of the New York Stock Exchange's
executive compensation committee. His experience suggests that he knows
whereof he speaks, and he speaks because he's concerned that corporate
leaders are losing respect in the public mind. He says that the business
page chatter about CEO salaries being set by the competition for their
services in the executive labor market is "bull." As to the claim that
CEOs deserve ever higher salaries because they "create wealth," he
describes that rationale as a "joke," says the New York Times
(Morgenson, 2005, Section 3, p. 1).
Here's how it works, according to Woolard:
The compensation committee [of the board of directors] talks to an
outside consultant who has surveys you could drive a truck through and
pay anything you want to pay, to be perfectly honest. The outside
consultant talks to the human resources vice president, who talks to the
CEO. The CEO says what he'd like to receive. It gets to the human
resources person who tells the outside consultant. And it pretty well
works out that the CEO gets what he's implied he thinks he deserves, so
he will be respected by his peers. (Morgenson, 2005.)
The board of directors buys into what the CEO asks for because the
outside consultant is an "expert" on such matters. Furthermore, handing
out only modest salary increases might give the wrong impression about
how highly the board values the CEO. And if someone on the board should
object, there are the three or four CEOs from other companies who will
make sure it happens. It is a process with a built-in escalator.
As for why the consultants go along with this scam, they know which side
their bread is buttered on. They realize the CEO has a big say-so on
whether or not they are hired again. So they suggest a package of
salaries, stock options and other goodies that they think will please
the CEO, and they, too, get rich in the process. And certainly the top
executives just below the CEO don't mind hearing about the boss's raise.
They know it will mean pay increases for them, too. (For an excellent
detailed article on the main consulting firm that helps CEOs and other
corporate executives raise their pay, check out the New York Times
article entitled "America's Corporate Pay Pal", which supports
everything Woolard of DuPont claims and adds new information.)
There's a much deeper power story that underlies the self-dealing and
mutual back-scratching by CEOs now carried out through interlocking
directorates and seemingly independent outside consultants. It probably
involves several factors. At the least, on the worker side, it reflects
an increasing lack of power following the all-out attack on unions in
the 1960s and 1970s, which is explained in detail by the best expert on
recent American labor history, James Gross (1995), a labor and
industrial relations professor at Cornell. That decline in union power
made possible and was increased by both outsourcing at home and the
movement of production to developing countries, which were facilitated
by the break-up of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the New Right
(Domhoff, 1990, Chapter 10). It signals the shift of the United States
from a high-wage to a low-wage economy, with professionals protected by
the fact that foreign-trained doctors and lawyers aren't allowed to
compete with their American counterparts in the direct way that low-wage
foreign-born workers are.
On the other side of the class divide, the rise in CEO pay may reflect
the increasing power of chief executives as compared to major owners and
stockholders in general, not just their increasing power over workers.
CEOs may now be the center of gravity in the corporate community and the
power elite, displacing the leaders in wealthy owning families (e.g.,
the second and third generations of the Walton family, the owners of
Wal-Mart). True enough, the CEOs are sometimes ousted by their generally
go-along boards of directors, but they are able to make hay and throw
their weight around during the time they are king of the mountain. (It's
really not much different than that old children's game, except it's
played out in profit-oriented bureaucratic hierarchies, with no other
sector of society, like government, willing or able to restrain the
winners.)
The claims made in the previous paragraph need much further
investigation. But they demonstrate the ideas and research directions
that are suggested by looking at the wealth and income distributions as
indicators of power.
Further Information
The 2007 Wolff paper is on-line at
http://www.levy.org/vdoc.aspx?docid=929
The Census Bureau report is on line at
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/wealth/wealth.html
The World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER)
report on household wealth throughout the world is available at
http://tinyurl.com/wdhw08; see the WIDER site for more about their
research.
For good summaries of other information on wealth and income, and for
information on the estate tax, see the United For A Fair Economy site at
http://www.faireconomy.org/
The New York Times ran an excellent series of articles on executive
compensation in the fall of 2006 entitled "Gilded Paychecks." Look for
it by searching the archives on NYTimes.com.
To see a video of Ed Woolard giving his full speech about executive
compensation, go to
http://www.compensationstandards.com/nonmember/EdWoolard_video.asp (WMV
file, may not be viewable on all platforms/browsers)
The Shapiro & Friedman paper on capital income, along with many other
reports on the federal budget and its consequences, are available at the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities site:
http://www.cbpp.org/pubs/recent.html
The AFL-CIO maintains a site called "Executive Paywatch," which
summarizes information about the salary disparity between executives and
other workers: http://www.aflcio.org/paywatch/
More raw numbers about the unequal wealth distribution in the U.S. are
available at Inequality.org: http://www.inequality.org/facts.html
Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley, has written or
co-authored a number of papers on income inequality and related topics:
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/
References
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Domhoff, G. W. (1990). The Power Elite and the State: How Policy Is Made
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Johnston, D. C. (2006, November 28). '04 Income in U.S. Was Below 2000
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Keister, L. (2005). Getting Rich: A Study of Wealth Mobility in America.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kotlikoff, L., & Gokhale, J. (2000). The Baby Boomers' Mega-Inheritance:
Myth or Reality? Cleveland: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A Radical View (Second ed.). New York:
Palgrave.
Morgenson, G. (2005, October 23). How to slow runaway executive pay. New
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Polsby, N. (1980). Community Power and Political Theory (Second ed.).
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Saez, E. (2009). Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the
United States (Update with 2007 Estimates). Retrieved August 28, 2009
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Saez, E., & Piketty, T. (2003). Income Inequality in the United States,
1913-1998. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 1-39.
Shapiro, I., & Friedman, J. (2006). New, Unnoticed CBO Data Show Capital
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Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
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Wolff, E. N. (1996). Top Heavy. New York: The New Press.
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Wolff, E. N. (2007). Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United
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All content (c)2009 G. William Domhoff, unless otherwise noted.
Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.