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Naked Capitalism has quite a wonderful, unintentional "call and response" moment in today's links:
On the one hand we have Dennis Gartman's gleeful statement to a Toronto reporter who asked him whether he is worried by rising income disparity:
"We celebrate income disparity and we applaud the growing margins between the bottom 20% of American society and the upper 20% for it is evidence of what has made America a great country. It is the chance to have a huge income… to make something of one’s self; to begin a business and become a millionaire legally and on one’s own that separates the US from most other nations of the world. Do we feel bad for the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the US? Of course not; we celebrate it, for we were poor once and we are reasonably wealthy now. We did it on our own, by the sheet dint of will, tenacity, street smarts and the like. That is why immigrants come to the US: to join the disparate income earners at the upper levels of society and to leave poverty behind. Income inequality? Give us a break? God bless income disparity and those who have succeeded, and shame upon the OWS crowd who take us to task for our success and wallow in their own failure. Income disparity? Feh! What we despise is government that imposes rules that prohibit or make it difficult to make even more money; to employ even more people; to give even more sums to the charities of our choice. That is what we despise… oh, and next question please."
Ahhh the envy / sore loser argument. Good as far as it goes right.... and this is how far it goes:
A times article linked directly below Gartman's comments provides a breakdown i"ve been looking for for a while:
"Together, executives, managers, supervisors and financial professionals accounted for 60 percent of the increase in the top 1 percent’s income, with a widening compensation differential between those in the financial sector and those in other sectors of the economy after 1990.
[As Naked Capitalism notes: Oddly, or not, exactly the class that has the means and opportunity to commit accounting control fraud.]
Superstar athletes, actors and musicians, often portrayed among the super-rich, accounted for about 3 percent of the top 1 percent from 1979 to 2005, far less than the less glamorous people (mostly men) who lead and advise America’s businesses.
Researchers have identified several reasons for the rapid growth in incomes for the occupations that make up most of the top 1 percent, including “winner take all” technical innovations that have changed the labor market for superstars in all fields; increases in business size and complexity; a growing premium for highly specialized skills; changes in the forms of executive compensation, including the rise of stock options and weaknesses in corporate governance; and the increasing size of the financial sector."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...me-inequality/
I've heard this "envy / sore grapes" argument ad nauseum and it's actually kind of a useful test of how out of touch the speaker is with the real issue. (Anyone espousing it can be safely written off.)
In fact it's an even better litmus test than that. I remember reading some comments from Charles Krauthammer (or whatever that New Republic guy's name is) to the effect that the OWS protesters are guilty of gross hypocrisy because they don't apply their disdain equally across the 1% or across the corporate landscape. That is they are happily tweeting on their smart phones about how much they hate corporate America. They treat Brin and Jobs, for instance, like saints but vilify banksters.
Hmmm Charles, is that the only explanation for this behaviour, or are the protesters perhaps able to make a distinction that is too subtle for you: if a billionaire's made his money creating something that is enormously useful to everyone they don't particularly care because everyone's become richer for it. If another has done so by extracting massive sums by gaming government regulation, ripping off pension funds, getting massive bonuses based on purportedly profitable trades that turn out to be massive losers and need to be bailed out at public expense.... etc. etc. then they are going to hate and vilify you.
How little our big men know...
On the one hand we have Dennis Gartman's gleeful statement to a Toronto reporter who asked him whether he is worried by rising income disparity:
"We celebrate income disparity and we applaud the growing margins between the bottom 20% of American society and the upper 20% for it is evidence of what has made America a great country. It is the chance to have a huge income… to make something of one’s self; to begin a business and become a millionaire legally and on one’s own that separates the US from most other nations of the world. Do we feel bad for the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the US? Of course not; we celebrate it, for we were poor once and we are reasonably wealthy now. We did it on our own, by the sheet dint of will, tenacity, street smarts and the like. That is why immigrants come to the US: to join the disparate income earners at the upper levels of society and to leave poverty behind. Income inequality? Give us a break? God bless income disparity and those who have succeeded, and shame upon the OWS crowd who take us to task for our success and wallow in their own failure. Income disparity? Feh! What we despise is government that imposes rules that prohibit or make it difficult to make even more money; to employ even more people; to give even more sums to the charities of our choice. That is what we despise… oh, and next question please."
Ahhh the envy / sore loser argument. Good as far as it goes right.... and this is how far it goes:
A times article linked directly below Gartman's comments provides a breakdown i"ve been looking for for a while:
"Together, executives, managers, supervisors and financial professionals accounted for 60 percent of the increase in the top 1 percent’s income, with a widening compensation differential between those in the financial sector and those in other sectors of the economy after 1990.
[As Naked Capitalism notes: Oddly, or not, exactly the class that has the means and opportunity to commit accounting control fraud.]
Superstar athletes, actors and musicians, often portrayed among the super-rich, accounted for about 3 percent of the top 1 percent from 1979 to 2005, far less than the less glamorous people (mostly men) who lead and advise America’s businesses.
Researchers have identified several reasons for the rapid growth in incomes for the occupations that make up most of the top 1 percent, including “winner take all” technical innovations that have changed the labor market for superstars in all fields; increases in business size and complexity; a growing premium for highly specialized skills; changes in the forms of executive compensation, including the rise of stock options and weaknesses in corporate governance; and the increasing size of the financial sector."
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/20...me-inequality/
I've heard this "envy / sore grapes" argument ad nauseum and it's actually kind of a useful test of how out of touch the speaker is with the real issue. (Anyone espousing it can be safely written off.)
In fact it's an even better litmus test than that. I remember reading some comments from Charles Krauthammer (or whatever that New Republic guy's name is) to the effect that the OWS protesters are guilty of gross hypocrisy because they don't apply their disdain equally across the 1% or across the corporate landscape. That is they are happily tweeting on their smart phones about how much they hate corporate America. They treat Brin and Jobs, for instance, like saints but vilify banksters.
Hmmm Charles, is that the only explanation for this behaviour, or are the protesters perhaps able to make a distinction that is too subtle for you: if a billionaire's made his money creating something that is enormously useful to everyone they don't particularly care because everyone's become richer for it. If another has done so by extracting massive sums by gaming government regulation, ripping off pension funds, getting massive bonuses based on purportedly profitable trades that turn out to be massive losers and need to be bailed out at public expense.... etc. etc. then they are going to hate and vilify you.
How little our big men know...
Yeah, all those lottery winners who crashed the economy with their obscure financial instruments, and got huge bonuses, while being bailed out by the government! People should be protesting them! This is the funniest thing I've read all morning. Seriously, did you really type that?
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