I agree - and bonuses have been recorded for years to be paid out regardless of performance. And they have been expanding extremely far beyond the wages of average workers. The "bonus" complaint only recently coalesced but has been tracked for year.
It has moved from a performance based system to a system of a bunch of guys taking care of each other.
I think my "some" is the idea of the shifts creating such drastic reactions. The rich's tax rates are about to go back before GWB. How many of the middle class and unemployed protesting taxes are affected by that?
This is another economic trend preceding the current recession not talked about
"While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent."
"The analysis by the two professors showed that the top 10 percent of Americans collected 48.5 percent of all reported income in 2005."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/business/29tax.html
"A recently released research paper from the University of California shows that in 2007, the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages – nearly twice as much as in 2000. The top 10 percent of American earners pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that, according to the research paper, “is higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of the stock market bubble in the ‘roaring’ 1920s.”"
http://www.carrborocitizen.com/main/2009/09/03/was-2000-2007-the-u-s-’s-new-gilded-age-try-platinum/