economy

Miller-McCune reports on University of Texas sociologist, Arthur Sakamoto’s new report on paying top dollar for the best service providers. Sakamoto cites the example of a top-rated prostate surgeon in the country having a potentially negligible difference from his colleague ranked 50th, while the difference in cost could be staggering. This, Sakamoto argues, is an example of how individuals seeking services will pay top dollar for a formally or informally ranked provider because of a lack of expertise on the part of the consumer.

“‘The top people in their fields are getting much higher salaries than they used to get,’ he said. ‘That’s most obvious among lawyers and doctors. But it also applies to the person who gave John Edwards his $200 haircut.’
Sakamoto believes that star-power phenomenon is one important reason economic inequality is growing within occupations — the subject of the just-published paper he co-wrote with ChangHwan Kim of the University of Minnesota. Usually, the term “wage inequality” brings to mind headlines about chief executive officers — unions like the AFL-CIO ruefully note that the average S&P 500 CEO averaged $15 million in total compensation in 2006. Sakamoto agrees the disparity between white-collar and blue-collar salaries is very much a reality, citing a 2002 study that reports the wage gap between high school graduates and college graduates increased 15 percent from 1979 to 1999.”

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education reports on the results of a new survey from the Pew Foundation which reveals Black perceptions of a deepening social split between poor and middle-class Blacks.

Sociologists Earl Wright and Darnell Hunt were asked to weight in on the results.

“We’ve seen over the past 20 years now a rolling back of many of the advances and gains of the civil rights movement, plain and simple. Attacks on affirmative action, attacks on welfare programs and not only welfare programs, but programs designed to benefit individuals who are among the working poor. And, add to this, the deteriorating economic structure in America,” says Dr. Earl Wright, the chair of the sociology department at Texas Southern University in Houston.

“My reading of that is that they probably are worse off. The economy has tanked. Look at the news right now; the housing market, the financial markets, the Iraq war has siphoned off resources away from the infrastructure and the domestic economy. I think that’s a reflection of what people are really feeling,” says Dr. Darnell Hunt, a professor of sociology and director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Miami Herald reports the recent recommendation from sociologist Michele Dillon to use lent as a time of financial sacrifice.

“Lent is traditionally a period of self-denial, so this might a good time to also focus on economic austerity, said Michele Dillon, a University of New Hampshire sociology professor who studies religion, particularly Roman Catholicism.

‘What’s different this year is many people who feel under economic pressure to give up things can at least use the season of Lent as an opportunity,’ Dillon said.

‘They can think, “I’m also doing this for religious purposes as well as lifestyle and economic purposes.””’