Betsy Robinson

It was once thought acceptable to own and trade human beings, to take the land of Indigenous people by force, to put debtors in prison, and to exercise vast monopoly power. It must now be asked: Is it morally acceptable that the typical worker's wage has stagnated for the last forty years while most of the economy's gains have gone to the top? Do we believe that people who are fabulously rich are succeeding because of their own inherent worthiness or because the game is rigged in their favor? Have people who are poor failed, or has the system failed them? Is it morally acceptable that the pay of American CEOs of big companies has gone from an average of 20 times that of the of the typical worker forty years ago to over 350 times today? Are the denizens of Wall Street—who in the 1950s and 1960s earned modest sums but are now paid tens or hundreds of millions annually really "worth" that much more now than they were then? (360-361)