Class Warfare at The New York Times

From the first page of "Business Day" in yesterday's National Edition.

Next Victim Of Turmoil: Your Salary What, then, will the next stage of the downturn be about? It is likely to revolve around the worst slump in worker pay since — you knew this was coming — the Great Depression. This slump won’t be anywhere near as bad as the one during the Depression, but it also won’t be like anything the country has experienced in a long time. Income for the median household — the one in the dead middle of the income distribution — will probably be lower in 2010 than it was, amazingly enough, a full decade earlier. That hasn’t happened since the 1930s. Already, median pay today is slightly lower than it was in 2000, and by 2010, could end up more than 5 percent lower than its old peak. [...] What will make this recession different, no matter how deep or shallow it is, is that it’s following an expansion in which most families received little or no raise. The median household made $50,200 last year, slightly less than the $50,600 that the equivalent household earned in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. That’s the first time on record that income failed to set a new record in an economic expansion.

You are so screwed, America. On the other side of the aisle (& the other side of the first page of Business Day) we are cheered by this.

Banks’ Bailout Unlikely to Crimp Executive Pay He said he did not think the Treasury plan went far enough, but he praised it as attacking the “perverse incentives” that led to the crisis. Compensation experts say that the provisions, though politically prudent to appease public anger, will probably have little real impact on how financial executives are paid in coming years. They predict banks will simply pay higher taxes and will find other creative ways of paying their executives as they see fit. Some say there could even be a sudden surge in compensation as soon as the government program ends, in a few years, leading to eye-popping numbers down the road. “Congress’s record of regulating executive pay has been unblemished by success,” said Kevin J. Murphy, a finance professor at the University of Southern California, pointing to perverse outcomes of past efforts.

Whew. We were worried that the driving forces behind our fabulous economy wouldn't be adequately compensated for all they do.