Wealthy People/Working People

Outrageous executive salaries — complete with "golden parachutes" — concern us all. So we were pleased to receive from Gary Boswell, a member of Local 88 (Council 75), a letter offering a number of pertinent facts in that very area. In each case, Boswell, an Oregon library assistant, cites reliable sources:

• The top 1 percent of the U.S. population holds 38 percent of the nation's wealth, and the top 10 percent holds 70 percent. Meanwhile, the middle 20 percent and bottom 40 percent together hold 5 percent.
• The average CEO at a major corporation in 1980 made about as much as 97 minimum-wage workers combined. The same CEO now rakes in as much as 1,223 of those workers.
• Today's minimum wage equals $10,712 a year; in real dollars (adjusted for inflation), that is one-third of what minimum-wage workers were paid 30 years ago. Meanwhile, also in real dollars, productivity has increased 74 percent since 1968, while wages for the average worker decreased by 3 percent and profits of domestic corporations increased 64 percent.
• Not surprisingly, 3.7 million families who work the equivalent of a full-time job are experiencing a "critical housing need"; that is, they live in substandard conditions or spend more than half of their income for housing.

Concludes Boswell, "As far as 'the American Dream' goes, yes, there are Americans who dream of accumulating as much as possible for themselves. But there's another American Dream: a vision of a society based on a greater degree of equality and allowing for a greater degree of democratic participation in workplaces and communities. In such a society, sympathy, solidarity and mutual aid would take the place of brittle, possessive individualism. ... Thanks for listening."

And thanks for writing ... and enlightening us.