May 31, 2018--You Say You Want A Revolution . . .

. . . Well, you know.

At breakfast the other morning John asked, "Have you heard anything about the Revolution?"

"God knows," Rona said, "There's good reason why there should be one."

"We're living in a second Gilded Age," John said. "What with 1 percent of the population owning 40 percent of the nation's wealth. That should be enough to get one going." 

Rona said, "Did you see the long piece in this weekend's New York Times about CEO compensation? Among other things, company by company, it calculated how many years workers earning average salaries would have to work to earn as much as their CEO makes in just one year."

"I did see that," I said.

John indicated he had as well and how outrageous the data were.

"My memory isn't perfect," Rona said, "So, John can you look the article up on your smartphone? I remember the title, 'Want To Make Money Like A CEO?'"

He did and cited some of the statistics--

At Walmart, for example, the world's largest employer, the median salary for workers is a paltry $19,177. Last year the CEO received $22.2 million in compensation. This means it would take average employees more than 1,000 years to earn what the CEO earns in 12 months.

"Unbelievable," Rona said.

Listen to this one," John said, "At Time Warner median compensation is a hefty $75,217 but since the CEO makes $49 million it would take typical employees 651 years to earn that."

Now I said, "Unbelievable. From the Times I remember the earnings numbers for a company I never heard of, where things are even more unequal. And that's saying a lot."

"Maybe Live Nation?" John said. "They are in the concert and ticketing business and the CEO last year made a whopping $70.6 million while the median salary there was $24,406. That means the workers have to live and work 2,893 years to earn that much."

"They should live and be well," I said, feeling my blood at full boil. 

"So, you asked about the Revolution," Rona said, sounding ironic. "Numbers like these should make everyone but CEOs crazy and take to the streets in anger to protest and, who knows, revolt."

"I hate to sound cynical," I said, "But who's more likely to make a revolution--Bernie's people or Trump's?"

We sat in silence for a few minutes not wanting to answer since we knew what we were feeling and it didn't make us happy.

February 15, 2018--Gilded Age

A friend who seems to know about almost everything that's on TV--knowing her is better than subscribing to TV Guide--recommend that we watch "The Gilded Age," part of the American Experience series broadcast on PBS.

I confess that I rarely (that means never) watch PBS. I like my TV at its raw, unrefined worst (when I can't stand any more Morning Joe, for example, I switch over to reruns of Married With Children)--television for me is for escape or to keep up to the minute about the latest high school shooting massacre (yesterday, therefore, involved switching back and forth between Olympic figure skating and the horrendous story of mass murder in a high school in South Florida not too far from where we used to winter.

But before that, we watched about half of "Gilded Age" (I kept nodding off since I'm not that good at taking in information other than by reading or talking).

What I saw of it was OK, full of well chosen photographs of the then vulgarians who made up the conspicuous worst of that era. The point, in part, was to remind us that we're living in a similar age and that we need to protect ourselves if we want to preserve what's left of our democracy. 

Dealing with gross inequality must become our highest priority. It was good, though, to be reminded that no matter how bad we think things are today they could be worse. Like during the Gilded Age of 1880 to 1920.

You know how these documentaries work--they depend mainly on vintage photos, film from back then, and talking-head historians who set the context. The ones who get me snoozing.

Last night, one of the historian experts who wrote definitive books about John D. Rockefeller, Sr., Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and William Randolph Hearst (all Gilded Agers), was David Nasaw, an old friend. I hired him for his first academic job in 1978 at Staten Island Community College. Some years before he had produced a neat book, Starting Your Own High School, derived from his experiences teaching at the Elizabeth Cleaners Street School. It was written by the kids and edited by David. He was just the kind of "radical" educator we were eager to bring on board at SICC for our "experimental college," which I directed.

He turned out to be the great teacher we were hoping for and after Staten Island went on to bigger but not necessarily better things. He's now a distinguished professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Center, where, after serving in President Kennedy's administration, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was affiliated. So David is doing very well as a cultural and social historian and was perfect for setting context for "The Gilded Age."

He and it were good enough so the next time my friend recommends something serious to watch on TV, I'll think about giving it a try.