Occupy The Huffington Post? So Snooty They Charge for Internships

December 3rd, 2011 12:46 PM

Via Jim Romenesko, we're reminded that Arianna Huffington is so cheap, not only does The Huffington Post fail to pay interns. They charge interns for the privilege! How very "One Percent" of her.

A Huffington Post internship sold on CharityBuzz.com for $5,200 this week, reports Jeff Bercovici. "In an auction held last spring, a three-month internship netted a massive $14,400. Last year, one sold for $9,000, and in 2009 the winning bid was $13,000. That price history makes $5,200 look like a serious bargain, and that’s even before you factor in the free soda and the nap rooms."

Curiously, the Huff-Po is publishing former Vice President Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein lamenting the persistence of dramatic wealth inequality in America. Left unasked: how is President Hope and Change doing on that liberal goal of redistribution? Apparently, it's not a factor in the discussion.

The question is whether it's cyclical or structural and the answer is that it's almost certainly the former. Note the huge bounce back in the growth of top incomes once the economy recovered. Since the underlying forces generating the increasingly unequal distribution of growth remained in place, there was no reason to expect a structural downshift....

What does the future hold in this regard? Will inequality, as measured by the share going to the top 1%, start climbing again soon?

I'm quite certain it will as the forces stoking its growth remain in place.

(HT: Dan Gainor)