William Steele, president and CEO of American Building Maintenance, whose 39,000 janitorial employees include Ms. Fernandez, received a 1999 salary of $605,107 and a bonus of $496,460.

Back in 1988, the average CEO salary was 40 times that of the average employee. Today the average CEO makes 400 times the average employee.

In 1982, Forbes magazine counted 13 billionaires; in 1999 it counted 267.

According to New York University Professor Edward Wolff, the number of households with a net worth of more than $10 million has risen over the past decade from about 67,000 to almost 350,000.

Million-dollar jewelry

The New York Times reports that at Harry Winston, the high-end jeweler on New York’s Fifth Avenue, "Internet millionaires barely out of college are splurging on diamond engagement rings at $1215,000 to $1 million each."

Meanwhile in Washington state, Tony Lee of the Fremont Public Association reports that "the median wage for a family leaving welfare has declined from $7.40 an hour to $7 an hour over the period of a year."

Forty-three percent of these families say they have had to cut back on food, Lee reports.

Writing in the Source, the newspaper of the church council of Greater Seattle, Elizabeth Whitford reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture ranks Washington fourth worst in the nation for levels of hunger and eighth worst for levels of "food security" – people on the brink of hunger.

In Washington’s King County, with a reported 76,000 millionaires, the Emergency Feeding Program reports a 60 percent growth in food bank requests since 1998. The gap keeps growing between the working poor and the obscenely wealthy.

Bedsores and diapers

More than two million nursing home workers bathe and feed elderly people, cleaning their bedsores, lifting them from bed to wheelchair, changing their diapers.

Another 700,000 work as home health aides, tending the sick, elderly or disabled and still another 1.3 million work as hospital orderlies and attendants at pay rates from $7 to $10 an hour.

And those paid to care for children, another 2.3 million, earn a median wage of $6.60 an hour, usually without benefits.

As the economic boom continues to shatter records, the income disparity widens. In Washington state, reports the Economic Policy Institute, the poorest fifth of all families lost $1,380 (9 percent) of their income in inflation-adjusted dollars between the late 1980s and the late 1990s.

Over the same period, annual incomes of the richest fifth of all families rose by $22,650 (19 percent).

Does Bush offer compassion?

George W. Bush, the self-described "compassionate conservative," would rely on voluntary charitable contributions to address these festering social and economic inequalities.

But, reports the New York Times, "both individuals and companies are donating less to organizations that support the homeless, the young and the hungry than they did in leaner times."

Paul Clolery, editor of a newspaper that serves nonprofit groups, reports that "demand for services is going through the roof."

Giving to the Salvation Army is up in some cities, down in others, but nowhere does it meet the need, says Tom Jones, a spokesperson for the agency.

"Meanwhile, better-off Americans are spending and borrowing more than ever, and reaching record levels of bankruptcy and debt, so they have less to save and give," reports the Times.

Philanthropic giving was indeed up last year but much of it went to the opera, the ballet, the symphony, the museum or the university. Contributions for human services, says Giving USA, fell from 13.9 percent of all giving to 9.2 percent last year.

Philanthropic contributions from corporations have been declining more than contributions from individuals, many charities report. (They never did amount to much – typically about 1 percent of profits.)

The shameful coexistence of massive poverty and obscene wealth has given rise to a movement that goes beyond charity and compassionate conservatism.

We’re talking about the living wage movement. Organized labor and the religious community are in the forefront of struggles on many fronts – among them farm workers, child care workers, janitors, health care workers and immigrant workers, documented or undocumented.

The core demand is that both public and private employers provide wages high enough to rent a home and feed a family, plus health care, pensions and other basic benefits.