Through rewriting the tax code, increasing bonuses for top-executives and providing enormously generous stock options and severance packages the rich are getting much richer and the middle classes and the poor are falling behind significantly (more on this in a future post).
The first graph (right) shows the dramatic increase in CEO to average worker pay that has occured in the U.S. since the 1940s, with a dramatic take-off occuring in the 1990s. The numbers are mindboggiling and unique to the U.S., for other countries are no where near as high (more on this in a future post).. For instance, in 1940, half of the executives earned more than 54 times the average worker's pay and in 2004, half of the executives earned more than 104 times the average worker's pay. What is even worse is that the top 10% of executives earned 74 times the average worker's pay in 1950, in 2004 this had increased to 350.
The second graph (left) shows the increase in dollars of average executive pay, increasing from around $1 million in the late 1960s to $4.4 million dollars today. An increase of 77.3% (comparision to average worker's pay increase in % in a future post).
The last graph shows just how much the guilded age is back in full swing, how the richest of the rich are becoming more rich and distancing themselves from even the rich. How the rich are amassing more and more wealth (futher numbers on this in future post).
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