I'm interested in international relations, American foreign policy, climate change, US presidential elections, public debate, Kansas Jayhawks basketball, film, and major league baseball.
Recently, thanks to data compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education, I saw these macro trends reduced to the micro level in a perhaps unlikely setting: institutions of higher learning.
In 2010, the 10 top-earning private college and university presidents made an average of $2.1 million. That’s up from $637,000 in 2000, a stunning average annual increase of 12.6 percent...
And just as in corporate America, those who preside over these institutions have done far better than those who populate the armies that labor below them. Over the decade that ended June 30, 2010, average faculty salaries at the 50 wealthiest universities rose by 14 percent, while that of presidents increased by 75 percent.When I was hired at University of Louisville in 1991, I made $31,000. That was considered a fairly modest starting salary -- it was certainly not at the high end of the pay scale. Using the CPI to adjust that to current dollars, my 1991 starting assistant professor salary would be worth $53,900 in 2015. The political science department has hired a handful of beginning assistant professors in recent years and all arrived making around $54,000. In short, 25 years after I was hired at a relatively modest salary (compared to what peer institutions offer), UofL is still offering the same beginning salary. The $54,000 figure is considered modest, competitive if adjusted for cost-of-living, but well below amounts offered by other schools.
“The last seven months have been a nightmare. Probably the worst time of my life, for sure....I have to defend myself. If I don’t defend myself, no one else will.”University of Louisville President James Ramsey, May 2015:
"All I have is my integrity … and I can't let people attack my credibility," Ramsey said bitterly at a special meeting of the board that he called. "Nobody stood up for me so I am standing up for myself."
"[Economists] show that there is just as much of everything as there ever was, and all that. But they don’t tell that what’s the matter with us is the unequal division of it. Our rich is getting richer, and our poor is getting poorer all the time. That’s the thing these great minds ought to work on.” – December 14, 1930
B. “To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which has taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits.”
D. “Human beings are themselves considered consumer goods to be used and then discarded. We have created a ‘disposable’ culture which is now spreading. It is no longer simply about exploitation and oppression, but something new.”
G. “It is evident that unbridled consumerism combined with inequality proves doubly damaging to the social fabric.”
J. “The dual crises of the capitalist economy and the planetary environment are systemic, paradigmatic and deep.”Click the link for the answers -- and for the rest of the quiz.
Party officials and their family members have reaped the spoils of China’s prosperity and amassed unbelievable riches, creating a deeply polarized China. There are 251 billionaires in the country today, compared with only fifteen six years ago; 0.4 percent of China’s families own over 70 percent of its wealth.In China, the economic elite are also the political elite. While political elites are wealthy in many nation-states -- even in democracies -- the concentration of wealth by Chinese national leaders is striking:
In 2012, there were more than 500 corporate CEOs in the National People’s Congress out of a total of 2,987 delegates. The top seventy members of this body are worth $89.8 billion. In contrast, the worth of all 535 members of the US Congress, the president, his cabinet and the nine Supreme Court Justices is only $7.5 billion.As Kwong notes, the twin problems of inequality and corruption in China could prove destabilizing:
The mere fact that the Chinese are discussing their problems in terms of the French Revolution is momentous: it seems to imply that they see China today as resembling France in 1789, when public disgust with the regime’s corruption and decay led to revolution. Chinese people from all walks of life—intellectuals, professionals, laborers and farmers—have been agitating for political reform and demanding, at the very least, a constitutional government and the rule of law. Yet this is exactly what the one-party system cannot accede to, even though without real reform, the Communist Party’s future looks bleak. If it eventually collapses—which now seems a real possibility—China faces a daunting challenge: without a viable opposition group, trained and ready to take power and govern, the country will almost certainly slip into anarchy.I've previously noted that China's political legitimacy is built upon its sustained record of economic growth. That success has brought hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. However, as China becomes wealthier and more overtly corrupt, more-and-more people are likely to notice the misbegotten concentration of political and economic power at the very top. And that could be explosive.
