Too Much - July 21

THIS WEEK

Simple numbers can sometimes tell incredibly powerful stories, as tax analyst Bob Lord demonstrated once again last week. Start with 100,000, the approximate population of Lansing, Michigan and Burbank, California. Residents of those cities spent about 100 million hours or so working last year. For that 100 million hours, the Phoenix-based Lord points out, each city’s residents earned about $3.5 billion. David Tepper last year took home that same $3.5 billion. He labored no more than a few thousand hours — as a hedge fund manager. He spent his working hours shuffling the investments of America’s most financially fortunate. What kind of nation, Lord wonders, values the work of one individual as much the work of an entire city? We wonder, too. In this week’s Too Much, more musings on the fruits of our labor — and their distinctly less-than-wonderful distribution.