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income inequality

Friday 8th of May 2026

1%ers To be in the top 1 percent of incomes nationally, families need to take in a minimum of $389,436. The average income of America's 1-percenters is $1,153,293 … Yet when incomes are measured state by state, the study shows wildly diverging fortunes for 1-percenters. … Teton County, Wyo., is the richest in America when it comes to 1 percent incomes, with 1-percenters earning $2.2 million. New York County, or Manhattan, ranks second, with a $1.44 million threshold … By contrast, you need only $97,000 to be a 1-percenter in Holmes County, Miss., or Lamar County, Ala. New York Times, September 25, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Amazon.com It may be tempting to see the Amazon surveillance as purely a warehouse problem, and surveillance-driven variable pay as a gig problem, but employers face no legal limit to incorporating new types of variable pay into formal employment — and abuses faced by independent contractors are merging with those faced by formal employees. … Corporations may soon jettison the fixed-wage model that has been a feature of blue-collar employment for decades. Zephyr Teachout, New York Review of Books, Augsut 18, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
American Dream Not living paycheck to paycheck © 2018 Kwiple.com
American Jews  Jews earn like Episcopalians, and vote like Puerto Ricans. Milton Himmelfarb © 2017 Kwiple.com
Ask candkdates … What will you do to decrease income inequality? © 2015 Kwiple.com
Banana republic Income inequality is actually declining in Latin America even as it continues to increase in the United States. Economically speaking, the richest nation on Earth is starting to resemble a banana republic. Timothy Noah, The Great Divergence © 2015 Kwiple.com
Books From 2007 to 2017 American authors’ median income dropped by more than half to $6,080. That’s in the world’s biggest book market, includes earnings from sidelines such as speaking, and excludes the one in four published writers whose total book income in 2017 was $0. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, September 9, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say Sure, we'd love to pay higher wages © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers According to a report from the Pew Research Center, children born to 90th-percentile earners are on track to make three times as much as those born to 10th-percentile paupers. The Guardian, May 26, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Across the US, 58 million people earn less than $15 an hour; 41 million earn less than $12.  The Guardian, August 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Average percentage by which U.S. military spouses earn less than their professional counterparts married to civilians: 27 Harper's Index, August 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Between ages 25 and 45, the gender pay gap for college graduates, which starts close to zero, widens by 55 percentage points. For those without college degrees, it widens by 28 percentage points. … The average college-educated man … improves his earnings by 77 percent from age 25 to 45, while similar women improve their earnings by only 31 percent. Men without college degrees increase their earnings much faster than similar women in the first decade of their career, but by age 45, women catch up. New York Times, May 17, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Even more serious is the ever-increasing number of people in extreme poverty — people living below half the poverty line, or below $9,500 for a family of three. An astonishing 20.6 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2011, up by nearly 8 million in just ten years, and 6 million had no income other than food stamps. … The near poor — those with incomes below twice the poverty line, or $46,000 for a family of four — brings the total of the poor and the near-poor to more than 106 million people Peter Edelman, So Rich, So Poor © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Factor by which the gender pay gap in the White House has increased under Trump: 3.4 Harper's Index, October 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Households with a retirement account have a median income of $86,235, while those without one have a median income of $35,509, according to the NIRS. Financial Times, September 21, 2016, National Institute of Retirement Security data © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers In 1970, 92% of American 30-year-olds earned more than their parents did at a similar age … In 2014, that number fell to 51%. — When looking only at males nationally, the decline is even starker. As of 2014, only 41% of 30-year-old men earned more tnan their fathers at a similar age. — If income distribution remains as tilted toward the wealthy as it is now, it would take sustained growth of more than 6% a year, adjusted for inflation, to return to an era where nearly all children outearned their parents. Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers In 2015, the median compensation for the 200 highest-paid executives at public companies in the United States was $19.3 million, up from $9.6 million five years earlier. New York Times, December 8, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Number of the 100 highest-paid city employees in Boston last year who were members of the police department: 98 Harper's Index, May 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage of black Americans earning less than $25,000 a year who say they have been called a racial slur: 40 Of black Americans earning more than $75,000: 65 Harper's Index, January 2018 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage of DC residents making less than $50,000 a year who have marched in protests against Donald Trump: 16 Of residents making more than $100,000: 50 Harper's Index, October 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage of income and wealth taxes in Norwary, Sweden and Denmark that are evaded each year: 3 That are evaded among the nations' top 0.01 percent of earners: 30  Harper's Index, October 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Voting, race and income   % of % of   population voters Whites in families 27% 35% making $75,000/more     Nonwhites in families 16% 11% making $50,000/less     based on 2014 data from Demos, “Automatic Voter Registration” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Debt As the fabulous Michael Pettis explained a few days ago in an FT Markets Insight, US national debt levels will continue to rise unless we can spread the wealth more broadly, because as much as the rich can consume, they can’t consume enough to make up for a shrinking middle class, nor do they create enough jobs to make a sustainable labour market. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 31, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Debt While much of the debate about limiting US government debt assumes that rising debt is a consequence of profligacy on the part of Washington policymakers, the problem is in fact structural. Americans are forced to choose between rising debt and higher unemployment largely because of the level of income inequality in their country  – exacerbated by the large US trade deficit – that has sharply reduced the consumer demand for American businesses and manufacturers. Michael Pettis, Financial Times, July 27, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Doctors Doctors, then, have behaved like a classic political interest group, and they've been very successful. They are now more likely to be in the top one per cent of earners than members of any other industry. James Surowiecki, New Yorker, December 19 & 26, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Education According to one Harvard study, more students attended America's elite universities from the top 1 per cent of income backgrounds than from the bottom 60 per cent. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Gig economy It has never been easier to find little jobs for little payments. Tim Harford, Financial Times, December 21, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Higher education American colleges collectively now give more aid to each student with a family income over $100,000, on average, than they do to each student with a family income under $20,000. Paul Tough, New York Times Magazine, Sept. 15, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Higher education [W]hile higher education has become more diverse by culture and ethnicity, the income gap has grown to be twice as large as the race gap. … racial preferences have not changed economic power structures in the US. Indeed, they’ve arguably hardened them by creating what might be called a rainbow aristocracy. … The system is rigged against the less affluent. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 17, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Housing Housing units earmarked for low-income residents have virtually no impact on surrounding property values in major U.S. metro areas, according to an analysis of home-price data that that runs counter to the conventional view that such projects cause nearby property values to decline. Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Inheritance The average inheritance in 2019 was $212,854, up 45% from an inflation- adjusted $146,844 in 1998, according to an analysis of Fed data by ecnomists at a unit of Capital One Financial Corp. Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2021 —————   2019 median family wealth of   families headed by someone $464,000 with a graduate degree $310,000 with at least a bachelor's degree $243,000 with a bachelor's degree $102,000 with an associate's degree $79,000 who is a high school graduate with perhaps some college $18,000 with a GED or high school dropout [According to St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers in the United States took home a total of $21.15 billion in compensation in 2013. New York Times, May 6, 2014 — average family size (AFS) = 2.54 people; median family income (MFI) = $51,017; $21.15 billion = 414,567 times MFI; 414,567 times AFS = 1,053,000 people — $21.15 billion divided by 25 people = $846,000,000 average compensation; $846,000,000 = 16,583 times MFI; 16,583 times AFS = 42,120 people © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A 2014 study by Alyssa Davis and Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning advocacy group in Washington, found that chief executive pay compared with the earnings of average workers had surged from a multiple of 20 in 1965 to almost 300 in 2013. New York Times, December 8, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality $10,400,000,000 2013 combined income of 4 highest paid hedge fund managers $8,300,000,000 2013 combined income of 158,000 kindergarten teachers Lowdown, February, 2015 — $10,400,000,000 / 4 = $2,600,000,000, the average head fund manager's income $8,300,000,000 / 158,000 = $52,532, the average kindergarten teacher's income $2,600,000,000 / $52,532 = 49,494 times the average teacher's income © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality According to new data from research firm Equilar, the median compensation – without perks – for C-suite executives at Fortune 100 companies jumped nearly 15% to $7.4 million in fiscal year 2015 from $6.5 million in 2013. Over the same period, perks jumped 21.6% to a median value of $126,550. Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Advocates of free enterprise like to say hard work should be rewarded, but in today's corporate culture, that simply isn't the case. While CEOs are often compensated, at least in part, on their companies' overall success, regular employees, who arguably are as responsible as executives for that success, are often not. According to a 2017 report … three-fourths of executives, directors and managers were given bonuses, while less than half of hourly workers were. Bloomberg Businessweek, Sept. 25, 2017 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality All of the 10 highest-paid executives [in 2021] had compensation over $100 million, a first. Their average compensation was $330 million, the highest ever. But it's not just a few executives at the top enjoying the spoils. Underscoring how widespread the pay increases were last year, the median chief executive made $32.1 million in 2021, up 27 percent from $25.3 million in 2020 and far higher than in prepandemic years. New York Times, June 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality As in recent years, some of the highest- paid CEOs of public companies weren’t running businesses in the S&P 500 index. Private-equity giant KKR & Co. reported paying co-CEOs Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall compensation valued at $559.6 million and $523.1 million, respectively. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality At Yale Law school, I felt like my spaceship had crashed in Oz. People would say with a straight face that a surgeon mother and engineer father were middle-class. In Middletown [Ohio], $160,000 is an unfathomable salary; at Yale Law School, students expect to earn that amount in the first year after law school. Many of them are already worried that it won't be enough. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The average CEO pay among the top 350 companies in 2017 was more than 300 times that of the average compensation of their workers, up from 20 times in 1965. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Between 1997 and 2007, for example, income after taxes and benefits grew by 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent of U.S. households, by 65 percent for those between the 80th and 99th percentiles, and by 275 percent for the top one percent. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Britain's biggest companies paid their shareholders five times more than they spent tackling their pension deficits last year … research published on Tuesday showed that FTSE 100 companies with “defined benefit” schemes, which offer a guaranteed income in retirement, paid £71bn in dividends last year, compared with £13.3bn in pension contributions. … nearly a third of FTSE 100 companies could have wiped out their pension deficits in 2015 with the cash they handed to shareholders. Financial Times, August 16, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality CEOs in general are paid far too much … Jesus Christ himself isn't worth 500 times his median worker's pay. Abigail Disney © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The CEOs of the fifty firms that laid off the most workers during the depths of the Great Recession took home nearly $12 million (on average) in 2009, 42 percent more than the CEO pay average at S&P 500 firms as a whole. Ronald P. Formisano, Plutocracy in America © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality CEOs' total pay has also grown consistently above inflation in that period [2014 to 2019], attracting political scrutiny. The Associated Press, using Equilar data, reported that the median pay package for the head of an S&P 500 company exceeded $12.3m in 2019, with the gap between CEOs and their workforces widening to the point where it would take the typical employee 169 years to make as much. Financial Times, June 10, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Income inequality … citizenship and income class of his parents. These two factors explain more than 80 percent of a person's income. The remaining 20 percent or less is therefore due to other factors over which individuals have no control (gender, age, race, luck) and to the factors over which they do have control (effort or hard work). Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality … a coming trial in Deleware's Chancery Court. The defendants: Tesla's … board of directors, which in January 2018 voted co-founder and CEO Elon Musk a 10-year pay package that includes a minimum wage (which he gives to charity) and 12 levels of stock options tied to market value, potenitally worth $56 billion if Tesla hits a market cap of $650 billion. (The options vest on each $50 billion in growth). … The potential award is larger than the gross domestic product of 27 nations. Robert Teitelman, Barron's, October 28, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Connecticut presents one of the starkest examples of the growth of US income inequality. In their guarded homes, Greenwich's rich have been doing very nicely: from 2009 to 2013, the income of the state's top 1% grew 17.2%. The incomes of everyone else dropped by 1.6%. The Guardian, March 27, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Discovery Inc.’s David Zaslav, at nearly $247 million, had the highest 2021 pay disclosed so far among the CEOs of S&P 500 companies who served the full year. Mr. Zaslav’s pay was nearly 3,000 times the $82,964 that the company reported paying its median worker last year, up from a multiple of 1,511 in 2018. … The second-highest paid CEO so far in the S&P 500 was Amazon.com Inc.’s Andy Jassy, who was awarded compensation valued at  nearly $213 million, narly all in retricted stock. That was nearly 6,500 times the median Amazon worker, who made $32,855 in 2021. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Even before the crash of 2008, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at the University of Michigan found that over any given two-year stretch in the two preceding decades, about half of all families experienced some decline in income. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A far simpler and much bolder approach [to reducing income inequality] … would be to set a new income maximum as a multiple of the existing minimum wage Any income above that multiple would face a tax of 100 percent. … A “maximum wage” set in this fashion would immediately intertwine the economic fates of society's poorest and society's most privileged. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Figures from the New York comptrollers's office showed the average bonus [of the city's traders and bankers] rose by 2 per cent to $172,860 in 2014 even though the industry was 4.5 per cent less profitable than a year earlier. … The shrunken securities industry accounts for less than 5 per cent of New York City's private sector jobs but 21 per cent of wages paid in the city. Financial Times, March 12, 2015 (2014 average annual NYC wage = $63,460; analysts' average = $250,000 to $750,000; $172,860 bonus = 2.7 times NYC avg. wage) © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality For the first time, all 10 of the top-paid C.E.O.s on Equilar's list received at least $50 million last year. New York Times, May 17, 2015 [Equilar, Inc. analyzes executive pay] — $50,000,000 per year = $136,986 per day = $5,708 per hour = $95 per minute = $1.59 per second ASSUMING they worked every second of the year © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequalty From 1993 to 2017, the average real family incomes of the bottom 99 percent of the U.S. population grew by only 15.5 percent, while the incomes of the top 1 percent of American families grew by 95.5 percent. “Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century,” Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality From 2004 to 2016, the average annual wage for chief executives in the coal industry grew as much as five times faster than those of lower-paying jobs in the industry, like construction or truck and tractor operator jobs. Executive pay averaged $200,000, up 60 percent from $125,000, while paychecks for truck and tractor operators rose just 15 percent, to $43,770 from $38,060. … The data excludes bonuses, share options and other perks, which often inflate executive compensation – and the pay gap – many times more. New York Times, May 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A generation ago, mainstream economists believed that greater equality  fostered dysfunction. Any attempts to restrain income at the top, this mainstream held, would reduce incentives to save and invest and throttle the economic growth necessary to “lift all boats.” But that mainstream has reversed course and now sees inequality as more likely to sink boats than lift them. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality High-income families now spend, on average, seven times as much each year on education as lower- income families, up from four times in the 1970s … From 2007 to 2011, while the broader economy was weak, enrollment at private schools with with tuition averaging $28,340 jumped 36 percent … New York Times, March 22, 2013, in an article about a competitive polo team being created at the recently founded and pretentiously named Oxbridge Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida, which will train at Wall Street Farm, a nearby riding school © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A hundred thousand dollars. Meredith Whitney, Wall Street analyst and consultant, when asked about her hourly rate © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality I am “just” upper middle class. But my life is one of late-Roman decadence next to that of the median earner. If you are a corporate lawyer (not even a partner) so is yours.  If you send your children to a private school, or live in the catchment area of an acclaimed state one, so, most likely, is yours. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, December 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality I was once told by the head of a prestigious think tank … [that its] board was very unlikely to fund any any work that had income  or wealth inequality  in its title. Yes, they would finance anything that had to do with poverty alleviation, but inequality was an altogether matter. Why? Charity is a good thing … But inequality is different: Every mention of it raises in fact the issue of the appropriateness or legitimacy of my income. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Imagine this: you are given one dollar every second. At that rate, after one minute, you would have 60 dollars. After twelve days, you would be a millionaire – something beyond the wildest dreams of most people on Earth. But how long would it take to become a billionaire? Well, at that rate, it would take almost 32 years. Linda McQuaig, Billionaires' Ball  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality In Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, the median hourly wage for software developers is $64 an hour, and from $11 to $14 for groundskeepers, janitors and security guards … Eighty-eight percent of computer jobs provide paid sick days, compared to 41 percent of building and grounds- cleaning jobs. Three to 4 percent of tech employees are black or Latino, and about 75 percent of janitorial and maintenance workers are. New York Times, March 26, 2013, © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality In the past three decades, CEO pay  “has exploded” to a ratio of 354 to 1, but their fellow citizens thought it to be about 30 to 1. Ronald P. Formisano, Plutocracy in America  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality In 2009 the richest twenty-five hedge-fund investors earned more that $25 billion, rougly six times as much as all the chief executives of companies in the S&P 500 stock index combined. Ann Pettifor, The Case for the Green New Deal  © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality In 2018, the median household income for a black family was $41,361, having grown 3.4 per cent over the previous decade, according to the latest US Census Bureau data. This compared with a median income $70,642 for non-Hispanic whites which had grown 8.8 per cent since the 2008 crisis. Financial Times, June 4, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The inflection point on the economic scale comes much earlier than you think. Something dramatic happens between, say, £30,000 a year and £130,000: a sharper change in the texture of life than occurs between the second number and a million. The first jump affects what you can do. The second tends to affect merely how.  The upper middle class can rent in nice districts of world-class cities. The rich can buy there. The average can do neither. The upper middle class can fly to another continent. The rich can fly business. The average must plan and econo- mise to do either. Having passed through the same universities, the upper middle class and the rich are often of a cultural feather. … How often does either befriend a nongraduate Band 5 NHS nurse? Or marry one? Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, Dec. 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality It can take a teacher, with a degree, 11 years to reach QuickTrip's starting salary for full-time employees with just a high school diploma. NewsOn6, Tulsa, Oklahoma [QuickTrip is a chain of convenience stores headquartered in Tulsa] © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A July report from the Economic Policy Institute found that the chief executive officers of America's largest companies made an average of $15.6 million in compensation in 2016, or 271 times the annual average pay of ordinary workers. Although that gap has narrowed over the past few years, it's still astronomically larger than the 20 times recorded in 1965. Bloomberg Businessweek, Sept. 25, 2017 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The largest gap between chief executive and workers in the survey was at Amazon, where this spring a union won a battle to organize a warehouse for the first time. Andrew Jassy, who took over from Jeff Bezos as Amazon’s chief executive last year, had pay that was 6,474 times that of the company's median employee. His compensation last year, $213 million, was the eighth highest, according to Equilar [a compensation consulting firm]. New York Times, June 25, 2022 [$213,000,000 divided by 6,474 means that the median income of an Amazon employee in 2021 was just short of $32,901] © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Male computer programmers make 28 per cent more than their female counterparts in the US, after adjusting for differences between jobs and workers. That gap is four times larger than the national average, according to a recent study from Glassdoor. Financial Times, April 7, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Median pay rose to $14.2 million last year for the leaders of S&P 500 companies, up from a record $13.4 million for the same companies a year earlier, according to a  Wall Street Journal analysis of pay data for  more than half the index from MyLogIQ LLC. Most CEOs received a pay increase of 11% or more, and pay rose by at least 25% for nearly one-third of them. … CEOs at roughly half the companies were paid at least 186 times what their median worker made in 2021 … That is up from 166 times in the year before the pandemic and 156 times in 2018 Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality One's income thus crucially depends on citizenship, which in turn means (in a world of rather low international migration) place of birth. All people born in rich countries receive a location premium or a location rent; all those born in poor countries get a location penalty. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Pension gains averaged 8% of total compensation for top executives at S&P 500 companies last year, up sharply from 3% the year before … But the gains are much larger for some executives, totaling more than $1 million each for 176 executives at 89 large companies that filed proxy statements through mid-March. For those executives, pension gains averaged 30% of total pay. [which is often in the tens of millions] Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Philippe Dauman, president and chief executive of Viacom, the entertainment conglomerate … got $84.5 million [in compensation in 2010] , an amount that exceeds the entire 2011-12 town budget for North Haven, Connecticut. It takes a village to pay a corporate titan. Timothy Noah, The Great Divergence © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The poorest American ventile [bottom twentieth or bottom 5%] is at the 68th percentile of the world income distribution … This means that the poorest Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world's population. People in all other (higher) U.S. ventiles are, of course, even better off, and the richest Americans belong to the top world percentile. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A rebound in returns drove up the earnings of hedge fund managers last year, with the top 25 performers raking in $15.4bn, up from $11bn in 2016. The 25 highest earners took home an average of $615m, according to an annual ranking of hedge fund managers' pay packets compiled by Institutional Investor magazine. James Simons of Renaissance Tech- nologies topped the pay list for the third straight year, earning $1.7bn, up from $1.6bn the previous year.  Financial Times, May 31, 2018 [$615m/365 = $1,684,932 per day] [$1.7bn/365 = $4,657,534 per day]  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Since 1978. the poorest 50 percent of Americans have seen their real incomes shrink, by 1 percent. By contrast, America's most affluent 1 percent, over that same span, have seen their real incomes nearly triple. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Since the 1980s the United States has embraced a pro-rich political philosophy. We do much less to reduce inequality than any other rich country. We choose to be unequal. … and we lead by example. Salvatore Babones, “America's Leading Export: Inequality” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The shocks of the past three years have hit all countries, but they have hit emerging and developing countries particularly hard. As a result, according to Global Economic Prospects 2023, just out from the World Bank, the convergence of average incomes between poor and rich countries has stalled. Worse, it might not soon return, given the damage already done and likely to persist in the years ahead. … According to the bank,  the number of people suffering “food insecurity” (that is, on the borders of starvation) in low-income countries jumped from 56mn in 2019 to 105mn in 2022. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, January 10, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Since the early 1970s, rising income inequality and rising income instability have gone hand in hand. The gap between Richie Rich and Joe Citizen is a lot larger than it used to be, but so too is the gap between Joe Citizen in a good year and Joe Citizen in a bad year. Jacob Hacker, The Great Risk Shift © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Researchers in 2017 recorded 2,676 workers performing 3.8m tasks on AMT [Amazon Mechanical Turk], and found the median hourly wage was $2 an hour. Only 4 per cent earned more than $7.25 an hour. The competition is global: workers in the US earn $3.01 per hour, while those in India earn $1.41. Prolific, a UK-based crowd-work platform for surveys and market research, imposes an hourly pay floor by calculating the average time it takes workers to complete each task. But while the UK's legal minimum wage for over-25s is £8.72 an hour, Prolific's is £5 an hour. Sarah O'Connor, Financial Times, 2020/09/16, on crowd-work platforms, which let companies cut virtual jobs into tiny tasks for homeworkers © 2020 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A study of CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms found that their total compensation in 2014 averaged $16.3 million. It had grown 997 percent  since 1978 — almost double the amount of stock market growth and far more than the painfully small growth in a typical worker's pay. The $16.3 million figure amounted to 303 times  the annual compensation of the typical worker, far above the 20-to-1 ratio of 1965 or even the 87-to-1 of the middle 1990s. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A study of CEOs at the top 350 U.S. firms found that their total compensation in 2014 averaged $16.3 million. It had grown 997 percent  since 1978 — almost double the amount of stock market growth and far more than the painfully small growth in a typical worker's pay. The $16.3 million figure amounted to 303 times  the annual compensation of the typical worker, far above the 20-to-1 ratio of 1965 or even the 87-to-1 of the middle 1990s. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Today, it is much more important, globally speaking whether you are lucky enough to be born in a rich country than whether the income class to which you belong in a rich country is high, medium or low. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The total income reported on the top 400 individual tax returns rose 20% in 2014, according to Internal Revenue Service data released Thursday. The figures reveal the concentration of earnings at the pinnacle of the income distribution, in a club that required $126.8 million of adjusted gross income to enter. That group, out of nearly 150 million tax returns in 2014, received 1.3% of income … Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2016 — 400/150,000,000 = 0.000002667 of returns 0.000002667 × 100 = 0.0002267% of returns 1.3%/0.0002267% = 4,874, therefore, avg. 400 income = 4,874 × avg. taxpayer income © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality US inequality may now be so sharp, and the political process so tightly captured by top earners, that necessary reforms will not happpen — much like in Europe before the first world war. Thomas Piketty, Financial Times, March 29-30, 2014 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality We can level up incomes at the bottom of our economic order. We can level down incomes at the top. Or we can do both. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality What if each of our societies set a ceiling on the annual income any one individual could pocket — and linked this maximum to an existing wage minimum? … In any nation that linked minimum to maximum, society's richest would be able to increase their own personal income only if the incomes of society's poorest increased first. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality When the largest pay rises come from billionaires who announce they want to be beneficient, that is not a sign that the system is working — it is a sign that it is not. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, October 7, 2018, on the announcement by Jeff Bezos that he would raise Amazon's minimum wage in the U.S. to $15/hour © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality While wages have stagnated in the rest of the economy, the average New York banker's bonus rose to $164,530 in 2013. That's on top of an average base salary of around $200,000. Wall Street bankers now make more than five times the average New York City salary, compared with less than two times the average in 1981. Salvatore Babones, Sixteen for '16 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Inequality [M]ajor inequalities in wealth and income in countries like the United States do not flow from interfirm or interindustry wage differentials. They are caused primarily by two other factors: a highly concentrated ownership of property and very large payments to top corporate executives whose decisions are, for all pracitcal purposes, independent of all effective external controls. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Inequality breeds corruption © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Inequality is man-made by men with vested interests © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Raise the federal amount of earnings at which workers become legally ineligible for overtime pay from $23,660/year to $75,400/year © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say What good are low-priced imports if you no longer have a job or don't earn enough to afford them? © 2016 Kwiple.com
Lotteries  According to the consumer financial company Bankrate, players making more than fifty thousand dollars per year spend, on average, one per cent of their annual income on lottery tickets; those making less than thirty thousand dollars spend thirteen per cent. That means someone making twenty-seven thousand dollars loses some thirty-five hundred dollars to the lottery every year. To put that number in context, nearly sixty per cent of Americans have less than a thousand dollars in savings. Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, October 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Making money the old-fashioned way Being paid a living wage © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Ex-Goldman Trader Says Bonus Cut to $8.25 Million Unfair headline, bloomberg.com, June 18, 2014, about Deeb Amin Salem, former Goldman Sachs bond trader who, disappointed after telling his mom he expected a $13 million bonus and by losing at arbitration, sued Goldman in court for more than $16 million © 2015 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Working two or more part-time, minimum-wage jobs with no benefits © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Reducing the salary threshold below which employers must pay overtime pay from $47,000 to $30,000 per year is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say Equal pay for equal work  Placard, Washington, DC, International Women's Day March, March 8, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Retirement If, instead of a universal retirement age, we had a universal “chance of a healthy retirement” we could set fairer objectives. If we decided that each baby at birth should have, say, a 50 per cent chance of getting to enjoy 10 or more years of leisure, retirement for the top decile  could be set just shy of the anticipated age of 68, while those in the bottom decile would be free to retire at 46. Having a single retirement age becomes, in practice, a regressive policy: disadvan- taged groups get less pension overall because of consistently dying younger.  Eade Hemngway, Financial Times, June 23, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Science education Government-supported early education [in the United States] is funded mainly at the state and local level … and because science courses are the most expensive per student, few schools in relatively poor districts can afford to offer many of them. Students from these districts therefore end up being less prepared for university-level science than are their wealthier peers, many of whom attended well-appointed private schools. Nature, Vol. 537, 22 September 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sexual harassment Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News star who was fired this week as a result of a sexual harassment scandal, will receive up to a $25m payout, equivalent to one year's salary, as part of his exit deal with 21st Century Fox … The payout follows the presenter's dismissal from Fox News this week after a 22-year career with the network and compares with the $40m collected by Roger Ailes, the network's former chairman, when he parted ways in similar circumstances. Financial Times, April 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Because of their uniqueness, they deserve whatever the market will bear © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say A rising tide lifts all boats © 2015 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility [M]ost of the decline in absolute mobility is driven by the more unequal distribution of economic growth in recent decades, rather than by the slowdown in GDP growth rates. In this sense, the rise in inequality and the  decline in absolute mobility are closely linked.  Growth is an important driver of absolute mobility,  but high levels of absolute mobility require broad- based growth across the income distribution. With the current distribution of income, higher  GDP growth rates alone are insufficient to restore absolute mobility to the levels experienced by children in the 1940s and 1950s. If one wants to revive the “American dream” of high rates of absolute mobility, then one must have an interest in growth that is spread more broadly across the income distribution. Raj Chetty et. al., Science, April 24, 2017 © 2024 Kwiple.com
State of the union With the unions went the wages © 2015 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Two recent Supreme Court rulings — one ending affirmative action in university admissions and another vetoing  Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness plan — have been lambasted by progressives as yet more evidence that the judicial branch is wrecking America. But there is a silver lining to almost everything, and I can see one here. The Supreme Court has unwittingly elevated the issue of income inequality, and the need for class-based educational reform in the US. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 17, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Taxes Moving to address income inequality on a local level, the City Council in Portland, Ore., voted on Wednesday to impose a surtax on companies whose chief executives earn more than 100 times the median pay of their rank-and-file workers. Under the new rule, companies must pay an additional 10 percent in taxes if their chief executives receive compensation greater than 100 times the median pay … Companies with pay ratios greater than 250 times the median will face a 25 percent surcharge. New York Times, December 8, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Teachers Back in the 1960s, public school teachers, on average, earned nearly 15 percent more than other people with similar educations. Now, even when health and retirement benefits are folded in, these teachers are making less than others with similar educations — about 10 percent less. Elizabeth Warren, Persist  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Teachers Over the past decade, the national average teacher salary has dropped 4.5 percent, adjusted for inflation, according to the National Education Association. In 2018, the Economic Policy Institute reported that teachers are paid 21.4 percent less than professionals with similar education and experience – a record-high pay gap, and a major reason the national teacher shortage is increasing. Alexandra Robbins, New York Times, March 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
The tech bro's I Have a Dream Speech I was the middleman. I made money off the platform. I used contract workers and their assets. I offered no benefits, no guaranteed pay. I made them liable for insurance claims. I automated  to  minimize  employees. I ignored local laws & governments. I ran ads  featuring  smiling  people. I danced the I'm-a-job-creator jig. I  raised  billions  from  investors. I ignored  user's  privacy  rights. I hired tax avoidance lawyers. I hired Washington insiders. I put money  in tax havens. I dug up dirt on my critics. I whooped, “Struck it rich, struck it rich, Thank God Almighty, I struck it rich.” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say We don't help you make a living wage, we help you supplement income from one job with income from other jobs © 2016 Kwiple.com
Vietnam War One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America, and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve. John McCain © 2017 Kwiple.com
Voter suppression I had to put the $42 where it would do the most good. We couldn't eat the birth certificate. An elderly African-American Texas woman living on a monthly income of $321 who was disenfranchised because she couldn't afford to pay for a copy of her birth certificate, which Texas requires to get a voter ID Quoted in The Great Suppression, by Zachary Roth © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality America's wealth inequality is even greater than that of income — the top 1 percent has more than 40 percent of US wealth, almost twice the share of income. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality In the United Kingdom, the United States and around the world, executive compensation has become the locomotive of our contemporary inequality. To “predistribute” wealth more rationally, we would need to slow that engine down. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Where did income growth go? 1935 to 1997 to 1980 2012  To top 1 % 7 % 72 % To 95–99 % 12 % 19 % To 90–95 % 11 % 9 % To bottom 90 % 70 % 0 % TOTAL: 100 % 100 %  The trickle-up truth; not the trickle-down bullshit. (Based on Economic Policy Institute data) © 2015 Kwiple.com