Re: [sixties-l] Wealth today

From: Ron Cabral (rcabral@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Jun 19 2000 - 18:35:15 CUT

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    A beginning public school teacher in San Francisco makes $31,000. Rentals
    are usually in the $1500 - $2,000 per month range and often in the worst
    neighborhoods of the city. A run down fixer-upper in-side the city limits
    would start around $350,000 +.

    Beginning Administrators make well under $60,000. A senior Principal makes
    just $83,000 and would have difficulty qualifiying for a home in SF on one
    salary. A new Superintendent was just hired for just under $200,000 plus
    numerous perks.

    Teachers come from all over America to interview because after all,
    everyone wants to live in wide-open San Francisco. As soon as they see what
    it would cost just to exist in SF on that wonderful salary, they catch the
    next plane back to New Jersey or to other points north-south-and east of
    the Golden Gate.

    These same conditions exist in most Bay Area locations such as San Jose,
    Berkeley, San Mateo and Marin. In the face of all the dot com wealth as in
    San Jose what is the poor public school teacher to do?...

    Ron Cabral
    Educator/Writer
    San Francisco

    At 09:39 AM 6/19/00 -0400, you wrote:
    >monkerud wrote:
    >
    >> A long post, but worth reading. How did we let things get this bad?
    >>
    >
    >> Gap between executives and rank-and-file grows wider
    >>
    >> In 1996, the typical chief executive of a large corporation in the
    United States earned 24 times what a manufacturing worker made, according
    to annual salary data collected by New York-based consultants Towers
    Perrin. By last year, the CEO was taking home 34 times what a factory
    worker collected. That spread is far larger and growing faster than ratios
    in European countries. The U.S. gap would probably be even larger if the
    survey measured service workers such as janitors or cafeteria cooks.
    >>
    >> Compensation among the 767 Silicon Valley executives in the Mercury News
    survey of large companies shot up 70 percent in 1999 after a 21 percent
    jump the year before. By contrast, the average annual wage around San Jose
    crept up a mere 5.87 percent to $51,509 from 1997 to 1998, the latest date
    available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    >>
    >> It would take about 11,845 years for someone making the federal minimum
    wage of $5.15 to earn the $121.7 million that Cisco Systems Chief Executive
    John Chambers collected last year.
    >
    >While no sensible person would discount the income disparity (whereby 20%
    of the people are holding 80% of the assets), these comparisons are odd.
    Why would you compare Silicon Valley executive pay to manufacturing rank
    and file pay? Why would you compare it to average wage? The point that's
    being made is that executives are earning more than their employees, but
    the stats used don't compare the two, if you'll notice. What's the ratio
    for Silicon Valley execs compared to Silicon Valley rank and file?
    >
    >The tech industry is a special case, currently fed by billions of
    speculative dollars. Money is flowing from top to bottom. Don't believe me?
    I can put you in touch with a friend of mine who started at AOL out of
    college, as a sales rep/customer service person. She retired last year
    (she's 33), cashing in millions in stock options given to her when AOL
    stock was in the single digits. To castigate people for having the good
    fortune to get involved in a company whose value soars seems out of line.
    The range of
    >positions eligible for options is ever broadening, and when you compare
    them to straight salary, to me they represent a more "democratic" form of
    compensation. Your stock value is predicated entirely on the performance of
    the whole company, which means you as VP of marketing are at least
    partially reliant on Joe Customer Service Rep, who attracts or repels
    potential customers with far more impact than you do.
    >
    >I cannot dispute the fact that top executives are being compensated way
    out of proportion to their tangible value. On the other hand, why is it
    their fault if they signed on with a company at $30/share, and leave it at
    $100/share?
    >
    >My point with this note was really to skewer the manipulated comparison
    from the original article. At least compare apples to apples!
    >--
    >^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    >Mark Bunster **It's a different kind of feeling
    >Survey Research Lab**you might not have felt at all
    >VA. Commonwealth U **makes me jump and touch the ceiling
    >Richmond, VA 23284 **if I fall well then I fall.
    >mbunster@vcu.edu **
    >rbunster@earthlink.net** --Chisel
    >http://www.imagineradio.com/mymusiclisten.asp?name=mbunster
    >
    >



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