Mind the (Pay) Gap

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.nationofchange.org/blogs/christopher-petrella/mind-pay-gap-1314924153

Ear­lier today the In­sti­tute for Pol­icy Stud­ies (IPS) re­leased its 18th an­nual Ex­ec­u­tive Com­pen­sa­tion Sur­vey. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, S&P 500 CEOs raked in $10.8 mil­lion in av­er­age com­pen­sa­tion (in­clud­ing the value of new stock) dur­ing the 2009-2010 fis­cal year. Re­searchers at the IPS say that this in­crease rep­re­sents a 28% rate of in­come growth over fis­cal year 2008-2009. Fur­ther, the gap be­tween CEO and me­dian worker pay at these same com­pa­nies rose from 263-to-1 in 2008-2009 to 351-to-1 last year.

So while CEOs are mak­ing mil­lions of dol­lars per year, how much is the “av­er­age U.S. worker,” (sta­tis­ti­cally speak­ing) tak­ing home? Well, it might sur­prise you to know that the an­swer is dif­fi­cult to find. Func­tion­ally speak­ing, the “av­er­age U.S. worker” doesn’t exist as a cat­e­gory of analy­sis against which poli­cies re­lated to pub­lic pro­gram­ming and/or and so­cial sup­port are based and jus­ti­fied. Try per­form­ing a Google search on “av­er­age per­sonal in­come, U.S. worker” or “av­er­age per­sonal in­come, Amer­i­can” and you’ll promptly be ush­ered to web­sites pro­vid­ing data on “av­er­age house­hold in­come.” The Wall Street Jour­nal tells us that “the me­dian in­come” hov­ers around $49,000, Forbes, $50,000. But why does a ‘av­er­age per­sonal in­come” search yield sta­tis­tics from an en­tirely dif­fer­ent cat­e­gory of analy­sis, namely, “av­er­age house­hold in­come?"

As it turns out, the U.S. Cen­sus Bu­reau, along with a va­ri­ety of other num­ber-crunch­ing agen­cies, cal­cu­lates but doesn’t uti­lize the “me­dian in­come in cur­rent dol­lars” as a vi­able unit of analy­sis for pro­duc­ing and de­liv­er­ing pub­lic ser­vices to our coun­try’s cit­i­zens. In­stead, the Cen­sus Bu­reau uses the cat­e­gory “me­dian house­hold in­come” as its basis to de­ter­mine qual­i­fi­ca­tion for so­cial ser­vices in­clud­ing, for in­stance, TANF (Tem­po­rary As­sis­tance for Needy Fam­i­lies). The hid­den mes­sage: If you want to have any chance at achiev­ing mid­dle class sta­tus then you’d bet­ter get hitched, or at least, part­ner up with some­one.

The myth: You are part of the mid­dle class. You have achieved this sta­tus based on your in­di­vid­ual merit.

More at the link --

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. k&r

[InkAddict]

2. IMPORTANT - Thx Donnachaidh - Read to the end

http://www.nationofchange.org/blogs/christopher-petrella/mind-pay-gap-1314924153


This afternoon, coincidentally, the White House unveiled its “We The People” program which “provides citizens with a new way to petition the federal government to take action on a range of issues.” Here’s how it works. Anyone over the age of 13 can go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/wethepeople and make a pitch for public support by way of petition. If a petition receives at least 5,000 signatures within 30 days then the White House says that it will “respond officially.” Although the idea behind the initiative seems a bit vague, it will at least induce the government to be more accountable and open to citizens on matters of public import. Perhaps a petition demanding for a narrower CEO-to-worker pay gap is in order…



SIGN UP! WETHEPEOPLE can be SUPERVOTERS and petition the what, SUPERCONGRESS, as soon as it goes live which could happen as soon as (fill in the blank); LOL.