Myth: The rich get rich because of their merit.
Fact: Researchers have uncovered dozens of social factors that contribute to becoming rich.
Summary
The vast majority of academic studies on who becomes rich
have found that intelligence and merit are only a part of the
reason -- social factors play a huge role as well. Studies of
Fortune 500 companies have found that American executives are
seeing exploding pay, but there is no correlation between their
pay and a company's profitability. In fact, companies with the
greatest inequality of pay suffer worse product quality. And many
studies have found that societies with the greatest equality generally
enjoy the fastest rates of economic growth.
Argument
Many conservatives and libertarians defend the current levels
of income inequality on the basis of merit. They claim the rich got rich
because they worked harder, longer or smarter than the rest.
However, researchers have conducted a vast number of empirical
studies on what factors contribute to success, and in what proportion.
A classic example of one of these studies is the 1972 book Inequality,
by Christopher Jencks. (1) And these studies
show that the meritocrat's position is not just arguably wrong,
but clearly wrong.
For adults, countless factors other than personal merit contribute
to success. A partial list includes:
CEO pay and other trends (original figures have been converted into constant 96 dollars) (10) 1990 1995 Percent change --------------------------------------------------------------------- Average CEO pay $2.34 million $3.86 million +65% Average worker pay $27,615 $27,448 -0.6% Corporate profits $212 billion $317 billion +50% Worker layoffs 316,047 persons 439,882 persons +39%
The fact that CEOs are helping themselves to record paychecks
at a time when they are laying off tens of thousands of workers
and freezing everyone else's wages begs a defense. And it's not
just liberals who demand an answer; blue collar conservatives
are just as outraged. A 1996 telephone survey of 800 voters, accompanied
by six focus groups, revealed that Americans of all ages, all
incomes, all races, and both political parties are seething over
the way large corporations have been treating their workers in
recent years. Large layoffs during times of profitability were
regarded as a "serious problem" by 81%; huge CEO salaries
were a "serious problem" for 79%, and stagnant wages
were a "serious problem" for 76%. (11) In fact, no less
a far-right candidate than Patrick Buchanan used this economic
populism to score a stunning upset victory over Bob Dole in the
1996 New Hampshire Republican Primary.
Wealthy conservatives offer a few defenses. One is that executive
pay is tied to the profitability of the company, in a widespread
system called "pay-for-performance." This payment method
involves paying executives through stock options and incentive
bonuses -- hence, an executive merely gets what he deserves. Sometimes
they even offer anecdotal evidence: in 1994, Disney CEO Michael
Eisner cashed in on $203 million in stock options, after successfully
restoring the once moribund Disney to the nation's leading entertainment
business.
Few, if any, would disagree that merit should be rewarded proportionately.
However, anecdotal evidence often gives a false picture of what
is happening; to get a truer picture, we need to look at generalizations.
The fact is that nearly all CEOs are seeing exploding pay, whether
their companies are performing well or not. Some of them inevitably
do. But despite their company's performance, almost all executives
are raking it in as fast as they can, reducing the name "pay-for-performance"
to little more than a public relations gimmick.
Crystal has conducted studies measuring the correlation between
profits and executive compensation in Fortune 500 companies. "It's
a table of random numbers," he told the New York Times,
"like throwing darts against the wall." Specifically,
he found there is "no relationship between pay-package sensitivity
and longer-term shareholder return." He also found that "there
is no relationship whatsoever between the size of stock option
grants and future performance [of the company]." (12) Crystal
adds: "There is no reason why they need to be paid this sort
of money. They could use that money to lower the cost of products,
give workers raises, or give shareholders more profits."
He sums up his findings this way:
Annual percent growth in GDP per capita (22) 1960- 1979- Country 1979 1989 ---------------------------- Japan 6.5 3.4 Italy 4.1 2.2 France 3.7 1.7 Canada 3.5 2.0 West Germany 3.2 1.6 Sweden 2.8 1.8 United Kingdom 2.3 2.0 United States 2.2 1.7
We should note that the causes of different rates of growth are
still controversial even among top economists. However, these
statistics tend to refute the conservative claim that faster economic
growth occurs when we allow market dynamics to disproportionately
reward the rich.
Return to Overview
Endnotes:
1. Christopher Jencks et al., Inequality: A Reassessment
of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America (New York:
Basic Books, 1972).
2. Maryann Struman, "For successful lawyers, it's all in
the looks, new study indicates," The Detroit News,
September 29, 1995.
3. Calculation by Michael Hout from biographies of "Forbes
400" in Forbes, October 23, 1994. Cited in Claude Fischer
et al., Inequality by Design, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996) p. 94.
4. Linda Datcher Loury, letter to the editor, Commentary,
August 1995, vol. 100, no. 2.
5. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 127.
6. Fischer et al., pp. 70-101, 14.
7. Edward Wolff "How the pie is sliced: America's Growing
Concentration of Wealth," The American Prospect 22,
Summer 1995, pp. 58-64.
8. Graef Crystal, In Search of Excess: The Overcompensation
of American Executives (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991).
9. Study by Graef Crystal for U.S. News & World Report,
reported in "The State of Greed" by Harrison Rainie,
Margaret Loftus and Mark Madden, U.S. News & World Report.
10. John Byrne, "How high can CEO pay go?" Business
Week, April 22, 1996. Dollar amounts have been converted into
constant 96 dollars by Steve Kangas. The original figures, in
current dollars, were reported thus:
CEO pay and other trends: CEO PAY WORKER PAY +92% +16% 1990 = $1.95 million 1990 = $22,976 1995 = $3.75 million 1995 = $26,652 CORPORATE PROFITS WORKER LAYOFFS +75% +39% 1990 = $176 billion 1990 = 316,047 1995 = $308 billion 1995 = 439,882
11. Three focus groups were conducted with Caucasian, non-college-educated,
working class men and women in Hartford, Conn., San Jose, Calif.,
and Oak Brook, Ill.; two with Caucasian, middle class, college-educated
men and women in Iselin, N.J. and in San Jose, Cal.; and one among
African-American working class men and women of mixed education
levels in Oak Brook, Ill. A "focus group" is a conversation
between trained listeners and the members of the group, who respond
to questions posed by the listener. The conversation is videotaped
and then analyzed and evaluated. The results have been published
as: EDK Associates, CORPORATE IRRESPONSIBILITY: THERE OUGHT TO
BE SOME LAWS (New York: EDK Associates [235 West 48th St., NY,
NY 10036; phone: (212) 582-4504; fax: (212) 265-9348.], July
29, 1996). Copies are available from: The Preamble Center for
Public Policy, 1737 21st Street, N.W., Washington,
DC 20009; telephone (202) 265-3263; fax: (202) 265-3647. Free,
but if possible a $5.00 donation to cover costs would be appreciated.
12. Crystal, Graef, "CEOs and Incentives: The Myth of Pay-for
Performance," Los Angeles Times, January 8, 1995.
13. Quoted in Byrne.
14. Quoted in Rainie.
15. Graef Crystal, "CEOs and Incentives: The Myth of Pay-for-Performance,"
Los Angeles Times, January 8, 1995.
16. Quoted in Byrne.
17. Douglas Cowherd and David Levine, "Product Quality and
Pay Equity," Administrative Science Quarterly 37 (June
1992), pp. 302-30.
18. Quoted in Byrne.
19. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, "Is Inequality Harmful
for Growth?" American Economic Review 84, June 1994,
pp. 600-21.
20. Roberto Chang, "Income Inequality and Economic Growth,"
Economic Review (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) 79, July/August
1994, pp. 1-10; George Clarke, "More evidence on Income Distribution
and Growth," Journal of Developmental Economics 47, 1995,
pp. 403-27; Peter Lindert, "The Rise of Social Spending,"
Explorations in Economic History 31, 1994, pp. 1-37; Lars
Osberg, Economic Inequality in the United States (Armonk,
N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1984); Edward Wolff, p. 64.
21. Gini Index: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population
Reports, Series P60. GDP growth: Bureau of Economic Analysis,
National Income and Product Accounts.
22. Gary Burtless, "Public Spending on the Poor: Historical
Trends and Economic Limits," p. 81 in Sheldon Danziger, Gary
Sandefur and Daniel Weinberg (eds.), Confronting Poverty: Prescriptions
for Change (New York: Harvard University Press, 1994), citing
Howard Oxley and John Martin, "Controlling Government Spending
and Deficits: Trends in the 1980s and Prospects for the 1990s,"
OECD Economic Studies 17 (Autumn, 1991), and unpublished
data from the U.S. Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics.