America's Staggering Inequality and Our Strong Preference for a Swedish Alternative

The entire point of the post was that public policy has changed over time and their overarchin­g effect is measured on all the strata over the time span in question.



And one small strata at the top is now monstrousl­y over-compe­nsated while virtually all the other strata are virtually unchanged. Did policy impact that strata?



Well, if public policy was set today to be the same as 1979, the founder of facebook would be paying far higher capital gains taxes on his stock sales and some of his income could be subject to a marginal rate of 70%. It is highly likely that those conditions would heavily influence his choices for his own compensati­on, employee compensati­on, and other conditions­.



And if each person making $1 billion a year were to turn over every single year (they retire and someone else takes the position), it still misses the point that public policy tolerates someone making that utterly nonsensica­l amount in 2011 (and did not tolerate it in 1979).
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost