Haiku Politics

Here's a quote from an article in the Sunday New York Times:

The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., made more than $15 million last year in cash, stock and options, according to the company’s annual report, an amount equivalent to roughly 850 times the pay of Wal-Mart’s average “associate” tending to shoppers on a superstore floor.

If that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, here are some more statistics from that article:

• "the top 0.1 percent of Americans in income receive nearly 7 percent of the total, the highest share since the 1920s."
• "half of the income gains derived from the increase in productivity from 1966 to 2001 accrued to the top 10 percent of earners. The wages of typical American workers, meanwhile, barely grew at all."
• "In 2000, the share of national income reaped by the top 1 percent of taxpayers reached 16.5 percent, its highest level since 1936, and higher than that of the next 4 percent of taxpayers combined."

Kind of makes you feel all fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

Posted by The Haikuist on Monday, November 20, 2006 at 4:29 PM | Permalink