August 23, 1995 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full speech: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/09/noam-chomsky-on-peacemakers-profi...
Personal income represents the earnings of individuals and, therefore, directly reflects occupational status, achievement and educational attainment. While many, though not the majority, of income earners reside in households with more than one income earner, trends in personal income are more indicative of the job market and the economy than household income. Personal income has risen considerably since 1953, especially for female workers. For male workers, however, income stagnated during the 1970s and 1980s, increasing substantially during the 1990s and then stagnating once more since 2000.
During the early 1980s, median earnings decreased for both sexes, not increasing substantially until the late 1990s. Since 1974 the median income for workers of both sexes increased by 31.7% from $18,474 to $24,325, reaching its high-point in 2000. Income inequality has increased considerably as well with the top 1% receiving much larger gains than all other demographics. This group has pulled ahead of other income earners including the remainder of the top 10% considerably during the past few years.
Since the 1970s, inequality increased during the 1980s, decreased slightly during the late 1990s and has since continued its overall increasing trend. According to Gini index data income inequality among all workers with incomes increased by roughly 20% since 1967. Both increasing median income, largely connected to an increase in educational attainment, and income inequality with the very top earners gaining a larger share has characterized personal income trends during the past thirty or so years.
"...from 1973 to 2005... real hourly wages of those in the 90th percentile—where most people have college or advanced degrees—rose by 30 percent or more... among this top 10 percent, the growth was heavily concentrated at the very tip of the top, that is, the top 1 percent. This includes the people who earn the very highest salaries in the U.S. economy, like sports and entertainment stars, investment bankers and venture capitalists, corporate attorneys, and CEOs. In contrast, at the 50th percentile and below—where many people have at most a high school diploma—real wages rose by only 5 to 10 percent." - Janet L. Yellen, President and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, November 6, 2006
There are some examples of excessive chief executive officer pay in the early twentieth century. When the United States government took control of the railroad industry during the 1910s, they discovered enormous salaries for the railroad bosses. After the Securities and Exchanges Commission was set up in the 1930s, it was concerned enough about excessive executive compensation that it began requiring yearly reporting of company earnings to help reign in abuse. These examples show that excessive CEO pay is not a new phenomenon, just perhaps not as common as today.
Anecdotal evidence for the General Electric corporation suggest that after examples of excess early last century and the Great Depression, following World War II executive pay remained fairly constant at GE for almost three decades. This may have been in part due to high income taxes on the wealthy. To get around this, companies like General Electric began to offer stock options in the late 1950s. The United States government eventually pared down the income taxes on the wealthy -- from 91% in the 1950s, to 28% in the 1980s. Thus the level of pay for GE's top three managers increased at a slow rate of about two percent per year from the 1940s to the 1960s but this period of little growth was followed by a rapid acceleration in top management pay. Mostly encouraged by the increasing use of stock options since the 1980s and of restricted stock since the 1990s. From the 1970s to the present, the compensation of the three highest-paid officers at GE has grew at the significantly higher annual rate of eight percent yearly.
The years 1993 -2003 saw executive pay increase sharply with the aggregate compensation to the top five executives of each of the S&P 1500 firms compensation doubling as a percentage of the aggregate earnings of those firms - from 5 per cent in 1993--5 to about 10 per cent in 2001--3.
The Financial Crisis has had a relatively small net effect on executive pay. According to the independent research firm Equilar, median S&P 500 CEO compensation fell significantly for the first time since 2002. From 2007 to 2008, median total compensation declined by 7.5 percent.
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Noam Chomsky (4/5): Peacemakers, Profiteers and Poverty (1995)by thefilmarchive1,417 views
@bcn533 i'm a nation subscriber, and i read every issue. i should probably pay more attention to the names. now i'm curious what other kinds of exposure he gets.
rysw19 6 months ago
@rysw19 He is a journalist for The Nation and he's well worth checking out. Perhaps I should have said 'a little' exposure. Your point is right though, of course.
bcn533 6 months ago
@bcn533 that's well enough, but as someone of considerable exposure, I even haven't heard of him. is he a journalist?
rysw19 6 months ago
@rysw19 Jeremy Scahill is brave enough to say some of the things Chomsky does and he fortunately does get some access.
bcn533 6 months ago
@ajames95 when was the last time you heard anyone like chomsky in the popular press? people don't know who or what to blame, so if you give them something, they will run with it.
rysw19 9 months ago
@fctchk when you say ignorance, it is in many ways enforced ignorance. (not everyone has the time to do real research; we all rely on authorities.) when you say indifference, i think you rather mean helplessness. ou rsociety is completely atomized and has been going downhill for the majority of the population for decades. people don't know who to vote for because the results are basically the same either way; people don't know who to blame because 4 or 5 mega-corporations own every news outlet.
rysw19 9 months ago
I hate to say this but Americans deserve what's happening. Chomsky seems like a prophet when viewed through the lens of present day events, and the US populace was oblivious. They just didn't care. Most people wanted to blame immigrants and poor groups (viewed as lazy) in America, and did nothing to heed this warning. Americans proceeded to shop, chase fads, go to church, watch TV, and not read. Now the rug is being pulled out from everyone. And they are wondering, "why?"
ajames95 11 months ago
I hate to say this but Americans deserve what's happening. Chomsky seems like a prophet when view through the lens of present day events, and the US populace was oblivious. They just didn't care. Most people wanted to blame immigrants and poor groups (viewed as lazy) in America, and did nothing to heed this warning. Americans proceeded to shop, chase fads, go to church, watch TV, and not read. Now the rug is being pulled out from everyone. And they are wondering, "why?"
ajames95 11 months ago
@rysw19 Mr. Reagan was merely one more product of American voters' ignorance of/indifference to how the world works and love affair with broad grinning glad-handers be they named Bush, Clinton, McCain or Obama.
fctchk 1 year ago
i'd love to see ronald reagan come back to life and have his skin torn off. criminal on every account.
rysw19 1 year ago