Our university President earns well over 35 times the salary of the cleaning staff in my building. And that ignores benefits and other perqs that are not part of compensation (such as having control of the pulpit). We can’t stand for that kind of inequality. Where has our sense of fairness and decency gone? And I thought Universities were supposed to be at the forefront? That multiple is still not near the ratio of CEO pay to average pay at many places, I would concede.
Putting snark aside for a moment, I’m honestly puzzled by this. The University is clearly a system in itself where the power structure is dominated by persons who would rate income inequality as a major flaw in the United States. And yet, even though promoting income equality is clearly within their power, they do not do so.
As a sort of mid-year’s resolution, I’d like to undertake an effort to understand opposing viewpoints better (rather than just nod indignantly at everything Wintercow writes feeding my sense of self-righteousness…). My stab at the logic from the other side: this is a giant prisoner’s dilemma problem. If one university defects (lowering faculty and administration salaries, raising staff salaries), valuable people would leave that university for another opportunity offering better compensation. It is therefore necessary to control the larger system as a whole to promote justice.
I think this is a hallmark of progressive thinking–from mandatory union dues (make them optional and no one will pay them) to gun control (we have to disarm everyone or else people with guns will take advantage of the fact that I don’t have one). Forced cooperation yields better outcomes, or at least yields outcomes that progressives favor. Funny, when corporations collude to keep salaries down or prices high, it’s called monopoly; when the government forces it to happen, it’s called justice.