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Decade of greed? Well, the '90's deserves that.

Good start. How come when we have economic good times and Republicans are in office, it's greed but when we have economic good times and Democrats are in office it's prosperity?

In the eighties, the corporate CEO made, on average, 45 times what the guy on the assembly line made. In the nineties, it was over 400 times. (I wish I could remember the source for that). Whereas the "greed" of the eighties tended to float all boats, the "prosperity" of the nineties tended to float a handful of handmade teak yachts.

Along those lines, I've been searching for some statistics on the 80's which I saw a few years ago. Basically, it indicated that the percent increase in salary(wealth?) for the lower income brackets was higher than for the upper brackets. That doesn't mean that the absolute gap didn't grow, but that the lower incomes were rising at a higher rate.

For example: I make $100, you make $10. If my income increases by 10% and yours increases by 30%, then I'm at $110 and you are at $13, so the gap still widens, even thought you have a much higher percentage increase.

I'm going to keep looking for these stats ...