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Your statistic is shockingly meaningless. 2009 was the bottom of a recession and a stock market crash. By 2011 it recovered. If you look at an equivalent measur

Your statistic is shockingly meaningless. 2009 was the bottom of a recession and a stock market crash. By 2011 it recovered. If you look at an equivalent measure from 2007-2009, you'd see a negative number. The top 1% of earners make most of their money due to the stock market and related activity by design, because if you're a shareholder in Coca-Cola, you want a CEO who actually cares about making Coca-Cola profitable over the long term, rather than someone who would collect a pretty salary for a few years and then retire to a life of leisure. You do that with equity compensation, stock options that vest over time - and, since satisfaction with money is logarithmic, you're going to need a lot of them. Now, the overall level of justice achieved by this current system (or lack thereof) is in fact a valid topic of discussion, though largely outside the scope of the post I make here. By contrast, this cherry-picked number you present INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST. I call on you to be ashamed of yourself. Unprincipled yellow journalism of this nature is bad enough in the wild, but HERE of all places we ought to value REAL information and understanding, not rhetoric and obfuscation. (Alternatively, please abandon Engineering and seek employment in the scummiest Marketing department you can find.)

kyllo 14y ago
Oh, quit your hyperventilating. If you have a problem with this statistic, direct your concerns to Dr. Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. A PDF of the cited study is linked in the Huffington Post article I linked to, and his CV and contact info are on his faculty page at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/ http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/
dragonwriter 14y ago
> Your statistic is shockingly meaningless. 2009 was the bottom of a recession and a stock market crash. The same basic trend (a small fraction at the top go up, the rest goes down) was basically true during the "expansion" from the end of the 2001 recession to the beginning of the 2009 recession (in that period, IIRC, by quintiles the bottom four all so declines in real income, and the top quintile was flat; the top 5% had a modest increase, and the top 1% had a significant increase.) This is why the 2001-2009 period between recessions seemed, in many ways, like a continuation of a long recession. Because for most people, it essentially was.
agent00f 14y ago
It's unclear the reasoning behind this assertion that a CEO needs stock compensation to do good work. Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some cartoon carrot hanging in their face, I'm not sure how they would be suitable for a top position in the first place over those who apparently are. -- It's also worth mentioning that there's little contention over the fact that salaries and wealth at the top of the pyramid are rising faster than the norm. The majority of GDP growth for quite a while has been going to the upper crust. I suggest reading the following if this isn't yet evident: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
- nthj 14y ago
  > Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some cartoon carrot hanging in their face As the Joker said in the Dark Knight, when you're good at something, never do it for free.

kyllo 14y ago

Oh, quit your hyperventilating. If you have a problem with this statistic, direct your concerns to Dr. Emmanuel Saez, Professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. A PDF of the cited study is linked in the Huffington Post article I linked to, and his CV and contact info are on his faculty page at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/ http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/

dragonwriter 14y ago

> Your statistic is shockingly meaningless. 2009 was the bottom of a recession and a stock market crash. The same basic trend (a small fraction at the top go up, the rest goes down) was basically true during the "expansion" from the end of the 2001 recession to the beginning of the 2009 recession (in that period, IIRC, by quintiles the bottom four all so declines in real income, and the top quintile was flat; the top 5% had a modest increase, and the top 1% had a significant increase.) This is why the 2001-2009 period between recessions seemed, in many ways, like a continuation of a long recession. Because for most people, it essentially was.

agent00f 14y ago

It's unclear the reasoning behind this assertion that a CEO needs stock compensation to do good work. Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some cartoon carrot hanging in their face, I'm not sure how they would be suitable for a top position in the first place over those who apparently are. -- It's also worth mentioning that there's little contention over the fact that salaries and wealth at the top of the pyramid are rising faster than the norm. The majority of GDP growth for quite a while has been going to the upper crust. I suggest reading the following if this isn't yet evident: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

nthj 14y ago
> Frankly if someone isn't professional enough to do their job without some cartoon carrot hanging in their face As the Joker said in the Dark Knight, when you're good at something, never do it for free.