I take issue with the "Average Company Salary" graph at the center of the article. The article claims that "This means that the rising gap in pay between firms accounts for the large majority of the increase in income inequality in the United States."<p>However, when CEOs make on average 300 times more than their workers, it kinda screws up that crucial average, doesn't it. Then there's the other executives messing up the data. For reference, in 1965 the ratio was 20-1.<p>Between 1978 and 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO pay increased by almost 1,000%, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute. Meanwhile, typical workers in the U.S. saw a pay raise of just 11% during that same period. Hmm.<p>It's cute that the article lumps rent-seeking behaviour, political corruption, monopolistic practices, exploitation of the environment by a handful of massive companies, tax dodging and evasion etc. into one small paragraph that acknowledges there are other problems.<p>And it's hilarious that the article claims that "focus on education" and "focus on anti-trust" are "unique recommendations" born of looking at the issue this way.<p>But to me, it smells of a deliberate attempt to shift blame. There were only a handful of protesters angry at how much Google employees get paid (Bless their hearts). But this article will reach many people, and under the surface - it's bullshit.
> In an increasingly winner-take-all or at least winner-take-most economy, the best-educated and most-skilled employees cluster inside the most successful companies, their incomes rising dramatically compared with those of outsiders.<p>US median income is $52K, software developer is maybe 100K, so around double. But to make that you have to live in an area with a much higher cost of living, and the various governments take more than a quarter of the difference in taxes <i>and</i> more than a quarter of the difference in disqualifications from income-based benefits programs. While you work 80 hours a week.<p>Someone making $100K in San Francisco is not doing better than someone making $50K in Houston. (You have a serious problem, however, if you make $50K in San Francisco.)<p>And the people clearing a million aren't typically silicon valley developers, they're Wall St quants and investment bankers. And those same people are generally paying the lower capital gains rate rather than the higher earned income rate, and losing a smaller percentage in benefits phase outs because by then everything is already phased out.<p>The numbers in the article are also including people who aren't working -- it has the 25th percentile income as zero and the median as something like $25K, which it probably is if you include retirees and homemakers and students, but how is that "income inequality"? For it to mean anything you have to be comparing people who are actually working full time. Anyone working obviously makes infinity times more than anyone with zero income.<p>As to the central thesis of "winner take most", markets like Facebook with network effects are the exception and have existed before (e.g. AT&T). In most other markets you can really blame regulatory compliance costs and regulatory capture. More paperwork to do and lawyers to hire and fees to pay to do business today than in 1970. The higher the cost of operating a business, the more advantage to consolidation.
The faster we can reach a Star Trek like world, where people work because they want to rather than need to, the better.<p>Lets focus on the rights of the living and let automation eat the jobs that it is able to.
I have flirted with GooAma AppMicroFace, and got a few interviews deep once, but after careful thought I stopped the process, and now I ignore the biggest tech companies. I simply don't want to be a cog in a giant machine, and therefore my talents will always go to start ups and small companies. Surely I can't be the only person who refuses to work for the top tech companies out of preference?
This was a long article, but I think it boils down to this:<p>"I believe that much of the rise of between-firm inequality, and therefore inequality in general, can be attributed to three factors: the rise of outsourcing, the adoption of IT, and the cumulative effects of winner-take-most competition."
>> Why are some firms paying better than others? It could be that some are just more generous — paying their workers higher amounts than other firms pay for the same work — although that would surprise economists<p>I'm not an economist, but as someone who has worked for many different companies in the software industry, I don't find this 'generosity' hypothesis surprising at all.
Managers usually don't have a clue who to promote so they just promote their friends or those who are liked by the rest of the team (for reasons unrelated to skill).
Maybe it's time to enforce a maximum wage similar to how we enforce a minimum wage? Maybe maximum = 10000 * minimum? This won't stop people from amassing assets and power (i.e. we aren't enforcing a maximum number of expensive art you can own, or senators you can call), but might curb the inequality among wage workers and CEOs.
Corporate world is just another market for me, driven by supply and demand. You cannot "force" oranges to have the same price in their production land and the same price in their export targets. Don't forget that equality IS NOT about equal number as many think, its about EQUAL chances and fair trade.
> News outlets reported that people had thrown rocks and a bus window had been smashed.<p>Do poor people really want to settle their resentment issues with violence? Because it seems to me that they will lose, at least if rich people defend themselves.