Monday, December 22, 2008

Class Warfare

Dean Baker: More Class Hatred in the Washington Post
The Post editorial, after deploring the fact that bailout money was diverted from Wall Street to the real economy, celebrated the pay cuts that the bailout would impose on UAW workers. For some reason, the Post attaches enormous importance to reducing the pay of auto workers who earn $28 an hour. It shows no comparable concern for reducing the pay of auto industry executives to parity with their foreign competitors. (The top executives at Toyota, Honda, and other successful companies get paid in the neighborhood of $1-2 million a year. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, they don't get paychecks in the tens of millions of dollars even in the best years.) The Post has allso never felt the need to insist on large pay cuts for Wall Street executives even though their banks are now wards of the state.


Somehow resenting the excess pay of someone who makes 1000 times as much as you is the "politics of envy" while resenting the pay of someone who makes a few percent more than you do is "populism".

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