from Robert Frank, in today's Guardian:

The explosive rise in CEO pay is part of a larger winner-take-all trend in which almost all the economic gains in recent decades have been captured by a handful of top players in each market segment. Although this trend has been driven largely by market
forces, its social consequences are troubling.

Spending tracks income, and each year a growing share of national income is devoted to the construction of larger mansions and more luxurious automobiles, spending that merely shifts the standards that define luxury. Meanwhile, working families struggle to make ends meet and governments continue to slash basic public services.

read the rest here...

Robert Frank is a professor of economics at Cornell University and author of
The Winner-Take-All Society.