Edited by Deb Stead

Working For Maximum Wage

Who says only capitalists get rich? A select few in the U.S. make a fortune in annual wages, according to a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. And the wage gap between these and other working Americans is widening. In 2006, EPI President Lawrence Mishel says, the average person in the top 0.1% of wage earners made $2.1 million, 77 times as much as the average person in the bottom 90%. Indeed, it took that top earner just three days and three hours to make what an average bottom-90% worker earned all year. In 1979, before the gap began growing, the top 0.1% worked a grueling 12 days to accomplish that. Mishel’s data extrapolate from a landmark study co-authored by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley that tracked wages up to 2004. Says Mishel: “The highest earners are now in a totally different orbit.”
–Peter Coy