One executive’s pay is 325,000 times the wage of the Haitians sewing his goods

In 1993 the chief officer of the Disney corporation was paid 325,000 times what the average Haitian worker in Disney’s subsidiary plants earned. The two figures came out of one company. Nothing in the comparison depends on setting a rich country against a poor one, because the garment stitched near Port-au-Prince and the salary drawn in the United States belonged to a single accounting system. Around the same time the president of Morgan Stanley collected fourteen million dollars in bonuses in 1996 alone, more than several countries received in American aid that year, and by 1998 the three largest personal fortunes on earth were worth more than the combined national product of the forty eight poorest countries, home to six hundred million people. Where a person lives has become the strongest single predictor of what that person will earn, in absolute terms and relative ones. Haitians assembling goods for North American brands sit at the far end of that spread while producing for the near end.