The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

Bud Konheim - CEO and co-founder of the luxury-fashion company Nicole Miller - had the following words for 99 percenters when speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box  yesterday: "We've got a country that the poverty level is wealth in 99 percent of the rest of the world. So we're talking about woe is me, woe is us, woe is this. [That] guy making, oh my God, he's making $35,000 a year, why don't we try that out in India or some countries we can't even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy." What this delusional man is forgetting is that the numbers he mentioned don't mean a thing without context. In the countries he listed (and other unnamed ones), the cost of living is much cheaper than in the U.S. Over the past several years, the top 1-2% in this country have experienced a very large majority of the income increases, while the middle- and lower-classes' incomes have been rather stagnant - all while the costs of living have increased. In other wo...