Up until the Reagan years, workers in the finance sector of the economy were paid, on average, pretty close to what workers in most other industries were paid. That's all changed over the past 30 years. Do employees of the financial sector deserve to be paid so much more than most other workers? No.
There is no better illustration of the disconnect between our economy's winners and losers than the California real estate market. The winners are bidding up Silicon Valley home prices and resurrecting the house-flipping craze. The losers are just trying to hold their cities together under a wave of mortgage defaults. Is there a solution?
It's the American dream: start out as a wretched fry cook at McDonald's, and— with plenty of pluck and hard work— work your way up to owning your own McDonald's one day. A new study quantifies just how unrealistic this idea is.
On one hand, the U.S. economy of the past few years has been great— for investors, banks, and the young affluent types propelling the new tech boom. On the other hand, progress for the middle class is all but absent (not to mention the lower class). Sooner or later, one hand is going to cut the other hand off.
There is something about achieving great financial success that seduces people into believing that they are life coaches. This problem seems particularly endemic to the tech millionaire set. You are not simply Some Fucking Guy Who Sold Your Internet Company For a Lot of Money; you are a lifestyle guru, with many important and penetrating insight about How to Live that must be shared with the common people.
During his time in office, Michael Bloomberg has been pretty "Don't Give a Fuck" when it comes to making sure poor and middle class people feel welcome in New York City. His newest plan for the cash-strapped city housing authority (NYCHA), however, might just be his most DGAF move ever.
We live in a world in which wealth is distributed in a wildly unequal way. A tiny few have billions of dollars, while many more have nothing. Though the reactions to this persistent and growing state of inequality span the ideological spectrum, it's fair to say that most people consider it a problem. For the very wealthy—and their sympathizers—extensive philanthropy is often held up as their personal nod to the world's unfairness. These generous philanthropists are considered to be the good ones.
Unpaid internships are controversial. "Workplace experience, invaluable connections, blah blah," say the employers. "You fired your lowest-wage workers and now you have us doing their menial jobs which have nothing to do with 'education,'" say the actual interns. All sides should be able to agree on this: unpaid internships—essentially part time jobs that pay nothing—are an incredible hardship for students without money, thereby tilting the playing field wildly in favor of students with money (as if they needed any more help).
A reader sends this photo of a vanity plate that everyone can enjoy, taken on a street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. "The front of the car was all smashed up," she adds.
Let us now, on the eve of this blessed holiday season, take moment to bow our heads and reflect upon the myriad miseries suffered by the group most persecuted by this modern world: the extremely wealthy. Thank god you are not in their very, very expensive shoes.
Brooklyn—the expensive parts of Brooklyn, the parts of Brooklyn you read about in higher-end trend stories—prides itself on being a great bastion of liberalism and diversity, a place where the intelligentsia can be proud to live. In fact, many of the proud liberals in these parts of Brooklyn are full of shit.
The Obama administration is changing some rules about how people can repay their student loans based on their income, to make that debt repayment somewhat less onerous for people whose incomes are low. Which is good. But not as good as it could be. As in many operations of our society, the lower class is helped less than the middle and upper classes. This happens often in the system of government we have designed. It is not a good system.
David Siegel is the founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts, a huge national timeshare company and one of the largest resort developers in the world. In 2007 he was a billionaire, although he may be only a hundred-millionaire now. He and his wife Jackie were the subjects of the recent documentary "The Queen of Versailles," about their ongoing quest to build the largest house in America, a 90,000 square foot monument to excess. And yesterday, David Siegel sent an email to all of his thousands of employees, in which he—in a veiled way—insinuated that they would be fired of Barack Obama is reelected.
Allow us, please, if you will, to direct your attention to this paper on the topic of Can You Believe How Much Motherfucking Money These CEOs Make, And, Even Worse, How They Try to Justify That Shit As If It's All Good. As noted in Gretchen Morgenson's column yesterday, CEOs and the cronies that justify their salaries are, in most cases, full of shit.
The news this morning: America continues to be a society starkly divided, in which a wealthy fortunate minority diligently works to prepare its own children for a future of perpetuating their social and economic dominance, while the less fortunate majority struggles simply to survive. It's Tuesday.
Americans are weird. You all say that you respect success and achievement, but your actions belie your lies. When will the average American stop waging class war by correctly observing that they are on the losing side of a rigged financial system?
Holman Jenkins, like any good upper class white male member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, is absolutely perplexed by America's "Inequality Obsession." Look America, the whole "I am concerned about the alarming levels of income inequality in America" thing? Yeah. It's getting to be kind of... how can Holman Jenkins put this politely... an obsession. Not cute.
