Guess they believe in personally living their beliefs like Al Gore does with global warming (e.g., living big with energy budgets and CO2 emissions that of a neighborhood of “regular” folks). First, let’s start with what “the folk” earn:
The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that: U.S. real (inflation adjusted) median household income was $51,939 in 2013 versus $51,759 in 2012, statistically unchanged. In 2013, real median household income was 8.0 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the latest recession.
Well, there certainly seems to be, just like the “grievance industry”, there’s one for “income inequality (at least in academia):
UC Berkeley ‘income inequality’ experts earn more than $300,000 a year
Several UC Berkeley economics professors who support “income inequality” research each earn more than $300,000 a year, putting them in the top 2 percent of the public university’s salary distribution, according to a recent report by a nonpartisan California think tank. The report pointed out that the prominent scholars leading or advising the Cal Berkeley Center for Equitable Growth are richly compensated as professors, even as the center seeks to research ways to create economic growth that is “fairly shared,” the center’s website states.
But the California Policy Center report, using 2014 data from the state’s public records, found Cal’s equitable growth center’s director, economics Professor Emmanuel Saez, earned an annual salary of just under $350,000. The center’s three advisory board members – all economics professors – made similar amounts: Professor David Card made $336,367 in 2014; Professor Gerard Roland took in $304,608; and Professor Alan Auerbach earned $291,782. That’s not even including their pensions — equal to 2.5 percent times their final average salary times the number of years employed.
Right – they want to redistribute everyone else’s wealth but their own. And if it HAS to be done, the only mechanism that is acceptable is government. Absolutely they will NEVER, EVER just, you know, reach into their own pockets and do it voluntarily. And, as the piece says:
‘If UC Berkeley economists are really opposed to income inequality and are concerned about low-paid workers, they might consider sharing some of their compensation with the teaching assistants, graders, readers and administrative staff at the bottom of Cal’s income distribution’
Actually, I’d throw a lot of the bloated Admin staff out first and then split that up too – stop the redistribution upward that makes college tuitions (in part) unaffordable.
I have no problem in people earning as much as they can – I LIKE Capitalism. I do have a problem with people living on the public dole using our tax monies to advocate for the taking of more even as their own income is multiples of Joe and Sally Everyone. Especially when they use Government to do it for when it does, it is enforcing NOT the system that made this country great but slouching to Socialism which, pretty much, ruins the countries that go the Full Monty with it (e.g., Venezuela)
(H/T: The College Fix)