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June 20, 2011

WP: Executive pay makes the super rich rich

Good piece in the Washington Post by Peter Whoriskey, pointing to a study showing that executive pay is the largest single factor in soaring incomes for the super rich.

For years, statistics have depicted growing income disparity in the United States, and it has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. In 2008, the last year for which data are available, for example, the top 0.1 percent of earners took in more than 10 percent of the personal income in the United States, including capital gains, and the top 1 percent took in more than 20 percent. But economists had little idea who these people were. How many were Wall street financiers? Sports stars? Entrepreneurs? Economists could only speculate, and debates over what is fair stalled.

Now a mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap.

And the study didn't include Wall Street firms.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:19 AM | | Comments (1)
Categories: Executive Pay
        

Comments

When they're hung (with the very rope they have sold) they'll still wonder what they did wrong.

Forty years later the Beatles almost seem quaint:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Imb4tYOk8GE

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About Jay Hancock
Jay Hancock has been a financial columnist for The Baltimore Sun since 2001. He has also been The Baltimore Sun's diplomatic correspondent in Washington and its chief economics writer. Before moving to Baltimore in 1994 he worked for The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk and The Daily Press of Newport News.

His columns appear Tuesdays and Sundays.
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