You know, Joseph Stiglitz (among others) has been warning about the effects of gross wealth disparity in the United States.
The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent… While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades — and more — has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Look at many American universities – especially their sports and medical components – to see how outrageous and growing wealth-concentration has corrupted and distorted that institution… That sad institution, to which we continue, sheep-like, to give our tax dollars because somehow, like its comrade-in-intellectuality, the NCAA, it’s non-profit… Harvard’s endowment may stand at around thirty billion dollars, its last president may have pursued a multiply-millioned hedgie career while running the place, some of its highest-profile professors may spend more time cultivating client dictators than they do teaching, but Harvard deserves the taxes of every one of those middle-class losers with their falling incomes…
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And speaking of consulting, here’s the University of Nevada and its system of med schools and hospitals on the front page of today’s New York Times. After a heart device company began paying monthly fees of $5,000 to various med school professors there, the university started using that company’s device. The hospital’s CEO didn’t know and didn’t care about this conflict of interest, although now that the federal government is investigating these matters, and, you know, right after the main faculty money-maker was “contacted by this reporter,” the faculty member told the pathetic CEO about the money (‘“We never delved into that level of the relationship,” [the CEO] said.’).
We’re talking here in particular about William Resh, who describes the $60,000 a year or so he gets from the device maker as “nominal.”
Which takes us back to Stiglitz. If you’re in the one percent, money that would look not at all bad as a yearly salary for the failing middle class is nominal, nothing, eh, fluff, nada, peanuts, funny money. I guess that’s why the CEO didn’t delve. Pocket change. Who cares.