The “skills premium argument” suggests that executives tend to be highly intelligent and highly skilled. It’s just a coincidence that they believe that their own high salaries are the inevitable result. However, it has turned out that this argument is wrong and that top pay is a symptom of market failure.
The intergenerational stickiness in income is around 60 percent. In other words, over half of a person’s economic status in life is predetermined at birth. Government can and should be part of the solution to promote upward mobility.
We are cutting our way from a recession into a depression. Now is the time for government action to prevent a new downturn.
It’s certainly good news that the U.S. economy is growing again, but if forecasts are right there is little relief in sight and it will be a long time before Americans have anything much to cheer about.
On the math, the current recession has long become a depression. No real improvement is expected until the end of 2014 at the earliest. That’s at least seven years of bad stuff going down in the Realonomy.
it’s completely ridiculous to measure the size of government in terms of spending. Most government “spending” is just money that passes through government hands on the way from one person to another. The simple fact is that American government is small and shrinking.
Leaving aside the Plutonomy, the rest of the economy where the “other 99%” of the population live is the Realonomy. The Realonomy is the Plutonomy as experienced by the other 99% who are not mass-affluent, near-wealthy, wealthy, or super-wealthy.
Many wealthy Americans simply don’t bother to declare their full incomes. They can do this safe in the knowledge that IRS audits these days are as rare as hens’ teeth.