The education page of today's New York Times carries a column claiming that "supply and demand factors cannot explain much, if any, of the growing college wage premium." The columnist seems to be arguing that the American labor market is an exception to the laws of economics that hold true everywhere else and that relate price to supply and demand.
The column says that "In 1978, the chief executive officers of major American corporations earned about 29 times the pay of average workers in their companies. By 1999, this multiple had grown to 107 times. Managerial employees have also benefited from salary increases that outpace those typically received by college graduates as a whole. These compensation trends for managers and investment professionals do not result from shortages of college graduates to enter these fields. More likely, they stem from an attitudinal change that makes great inequities more acceptable in American society."
This is just flaky. "American society" doesn't set executive compensation; boards of directors do. And of course the compensation of managerial and professional employees is set by supply and demand. If the education columnist needs a reminder of this, he might check out the story on the front of the business section of today's Times, which runs under the headline "Management/ When Top Jobs Go Begging/ Talent Gaps Send Companies Scrambling for a Shoehorn." That article paraphrases one executive recruiter as saying that until recently, the executive population has grown in line with gross domestic product. "But these days, supply and demand are moving in opposite directions," the story says. The business-page story is no gem, but at least it displays some understanding of the workings of the labor market, which is more than can be said of the education-page column.
Communists: In an Internet column published last week, Ronald Radosh wrote about "The New York Times' Love Affair With Communism." The love affair with communism continues at the workplace section of today's Times, in the column on "My Job." The column is written by a Russian artist, who says that his life has become worse since the days of the Soviet Union. "In Soviet days, I would go off and do some painting just for myself, because I had stable wages. I had my job at the school. I painted posters for all the political parades. There was a lot of work for May Day and Revolution Day. I painted Lenin hundreds of times. Not just anyone was allowed to paint Lenin. You had to have a higher art degree, which I had. We also painted a lot of banners, with words like 'Glory to the Communist Party.'" The context in which this "My Job" column should be viewed is that of Mr. Radosh's column on "The New York Times' Love Affair With Communism."
Iraq and Foreign Aid: A front-page dispatch from Cairo in this morning's New York Times reports on flights by high-ranking delegations from Egypt and Jordan to Iraq. The story misses an important angle, though. Section 534 of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act of 2000 states that no American foreign aid should be provided to nations that violate the international sanctions on Iraq. Senator Helms and Rep. Benjamin Gilman pressed this point last week in a letter to the American secretary of state. It's just weird for the Times to run a front-page story on the flights to Iraq without mentioning that they could jeopardize billions of dollars in American foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan and without mentioning that the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the chairman of the House International Relations Committee are raising a ruckus about it.
Mainstream Muslims: A front-page story in today's Times about the dispute over Hillary Clinton getting campaign cash from apologists for Arab terrorists claims that the American Muslim Alliance and the American Muslim Council "are generally regarded as mainstream in their views." Generally regarded as mainstream by whom? By the Times? Maybe. But if the Times expects readers to believe that most Americans or most New Yorkers consider it mainstream to support suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets, the Times itself is out of the mainstream.
The Times and the Mayor: The metro section of today's Times includes a dispatch about Mayor Giuliani's praise for Rep. Rick Lazio's positions on Israel. The article reports, "Mr. Lazio's campaign has also not asked Mr. Giuliani to appear in minority neighborhoods, where the mayor is disliked and feared." Feared? This claim isn't attributed to the Lazio camp; it's just a flat-out assertion by the Times, and it is over the top. There's little evidence to support it. Some blacks and Puerto Ricans in New York may fear the New York City Police Department, but they probably fear criminals even more. They certainly don't fear the mayor; he's a slight man with prostate cancer who has been in a warm mood lately because he is happy about the Yankees' victory in the World Series. There is nothing to be afraid of. The general use of the term "minority neighborhoods" to describe areas in which the mayor is supposedly disliked and "feared" is also sloppy. Do Chinese Americans or Orthodox Jews dislike and fear the mayor? They are minorities, too. The Times just can't seem to contain its own dislike and fear of the mayor.