Perhaps a little slow out of the gate, but The Times has an editorial today on the most recent evidence of a widening gap in U.S. wealth. It follows similar lines as those voiced last week by Finlay ON Governance in our Outrage of the Week. The Times includes reference to record levels of CEO pay, which we, too, noted last week. The editorial rather obliquely calls this “the largess of top-tier compensation.”
In our post, we talked about the social turmoil previous periods of wealth disparity have caused. Here is an excerpt:
Capitalism has experienced these kinds of episodes in the past —the Gilded Age from 1865 to 1901 and the “malefactors of great wealth” that sparked the fury of Theodore Roosevelt and his promise of a “square deal” in a fledgling 20th century come to mind. The results produced considerable upheaval. One of the more turbulent periods was the aftermath of the Great Depression, when the promise of a “new deal” began to resonate with displaced workers who rode the rails in search of work. It is not encouraging that we are seeing a return to the milestone of 1929 in 2007.
The Times entitles its editorial “It Didn’t End Well Last Time.” Well said.