taestell’s posterous

Thirty years ago top executives at S&P 500 companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did -- now they make 300 times what their workers make.

That's the kind of statistic a show like Undercover Boss can put flesh and blood on. Here are a few others:

• Since 2000, 3.2 million more American households are trying to make do on under $25,000 a year.
• In 2005, households in the bottom 20 percent had an average income of $10,655, while the top 20 percent made $159,583 -- a disparity of 1,500 percent, the highest gap ever recorded.
• In 2007, the top ten percent pocketed almost half of all the money earned in America -- the highest percentage recorded since 1917 (including, as Henry Blodget notes, 1928, the peak of the stock market bubble in the "roaring 1920s").

(...)

Those are ugly trends, but Americans still want to believe otherwise. Over 60 percent of parents think that their children will have a higher standard of living than they have. And over 70 percent believe that drive and hard work play a bigger role in economic mobility than external factors, such as the income of parents.