From: Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(from yesterday's NYT)
..."The top fifth of earners in Manhattan now make 52 times what the lowest
fifth make...which is roughly equal to the income disparity in
Namibia". (Data from the 2000 census.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/nyregion/04income.html
[Here's another point about Labor Day, also from yesterday's NYT.]
For the Self-Employed, Labor Doesn't Take a Holiday
By DANIEL GROSS
The Labor Day weekend provides a bittersweet clean break. Children relish
the fleeting downtime before the grind of school kicks in. Adults hurry to
squeeze in a last round of golf or trip to the beach before the rhythm of
work returns.
But for this writer - and for a growing number of people in this economy -
Labor Day isn't an end to anything. For us, the final weeks of August are
hardly a time of relaxation. When it seems like most of our friends,
neighbors, and colleagues are recharging their batteries, were toiling as
usual. The reason: we don't get paid vacations.
It's long been true that many self-employed, contract or contingent workers
- taxi drivers, day laborers, waiters - don't get paid for time they don't
work. But structural changes in the economy ensure that with each passing
year, a larger and more representative slice of the work force goes without
paid respite. ...
All over the country, legions of productive workers - real estate
salespeople and mortgage brokers, literary agents and documentary
filmmakers, hedge fund managers and insurance agents, Web designers and
personal trainers, "downsized" middle managers turned consultants and
bloggers, and the hundreds of thousands of people who make a living selling
goods on eBay - go to work for themselves every morning.
In a report for the Small Business Administration, Robert W. Fairlie, an
economist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, concluded that there
were 12.2 million self-employed workers in 2003, representing about 10
percent of the work force, up from 11.5 million in 2000. The National
Association for the Self-Employed, citing Census Bureau data, puts the
number at 16 million.
Having been self-employed for 12 years, I can report there is much to
recommend this career path. People who work for themselves are frequently
able to pursue their dreams, earn more income, and better integrate the
demands of work and family than those on salary. But there's a downside to
self-employment that surfaces when the economy reaches low tide in late
summer.
Traditionally, August was a time of near-universal vacations because
factories would shut down and offices and shops became uninhabitable -
without air-conditioning, it was simply too hot to work. But now that we've
shifted from a manufacturing-based economy to a climate-controlled service
economy, it's never too hot to trade stocks, or to consult, or to buy and
sell homes.
"August was busier than July for me," said Laurie Crouse, a real estate
broker with Coldwell Banker/Riverside Shavell in Westport, Conn. Like
virtually all real estate brokers, Ms. Crouse is self-employed and works on
commission. She hasn't taken off an entire week for "more than two years,
maybe three."
Indeed, for many professionals, leaving town for a couple of weeks at the
end of August can be self-destructive. A power seller on eBay can't simply
stop shipping baseball cards or picture frames for two weeks. Customers will
look elsewhere. A blogger who shuts down in August may lose readers. ...
To a degree, self-employment .... [makes] everybody ... constantly engaged
in arbitrage between time and money. Take off one week, and you lose X
thousand dollars in income. But how precisely does one hedge the value of
lost compensation against the intangible gains of time spent relaxing with
your family?
Then there's the long-term opportunity cost of unplugging. If you're not
around when a client calls, the client might find somebody else, who might
do a better job. Then you won't even get a call the next time.
This isn't a plea for pity. Many people are self-employed by choice. And for
them, for 48 or 49 weeks of the year it's clearly the right choice. But the
fact that millions of hard-working Americans are going without paid
vacations might help explain why the economic mood - even before Katrina -
has been sour this summer.
And it certainly helps explain why, on one of the last days of summer, the
5:23 Metro North train out of Grand Central was packed with money managers
and floor traders, writers and consultants, employed and self-employed. When
the train crossed a bridge that offers a beautiful, calming view of Long
Island Sound, most heads, including mine, were bent over laptops,
BlackBerries, and research reports. When you work for yourself, time is
always money.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/weekinreview/04gros.html?pagewanted=print>
Carl
