After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:

‘Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income.

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The first time I remember hearing the question ‘is it real?’ was when I went as a young boy to see a traveling show put on by ‘professional wrestlers’ one summer evening in the gym of the Forks River Elementary School in Elmwood, Tennessee.

The evidence that it was real was palpable: ‘They’re really hurting each other! That’s real blood! Look a’there! They can’t fake that!’ On the other hand, there was clearly a script (or in today’s language, a ‘narrative’), with good guys to cheer and bad guys to boo.

But the most unusual and in some ways most interesting character in these dramas was the referee: Whenever the bad guy committed a gross and obvious violation of the ‘rules’ – such as they were – like using a metal folding chair to smack the good guy in the head, the referee always seemed to be preoccupied with one of the cornermen, or looking the other way. Yet whenever the good guy – after absorbing more abuse and unfairness than any reasonable person could tolerate – committed the slightest infraction, the referee was all over him. The answer to the question ‘Is it real?’ seemed connected to the question of whether […]

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