experts" agree that the 30-year trend in America of greater inequality is a natural economic/historical trend of economic rewards for those with educational achievements and workplace skills. The authors do not. The income distribution has not followed a pattern of "the 29% of Americans with college degrees pulling away" from those who have less education. It is the top 1% that have pulled away from the top 20%, and most especially "the top 0.1% or even 0.01%" that has grown richer than the rest of the population. Nor has this rise in inequality taken place in many other developed economies. Western Europe and Japan, "haven't seen anything like the rise in inequality America has." Inequality in France and Switzerland has actually fallen; in Germany it has remained the same; and in Ericsson's Sweden and Sony's Japan it has moved up only slightly. The relative lack of skill of American workers cannot be blamed, as there is not one. There is no gap between American workers and those of Europeans, Canadians, et al., measured in years of schooling. America's more extreme stratification has not come with any benefit of faster economic growth or more social mobility than its peer countries. Economic growth per capita was essentially the same in the US as that of the 15 core nations of Europe through 2006. America's self-image as the land of the American Dream and rags-to-riches success notwithstanding, the share of those brought up poor or middle class who succeeded in becoming rich (i.e. the social mobility), is now less than in almost all other developed countries. Two areas related to income distribution where the US differs quite a bit from other developed countries are executive pay and unionization. Unions as a whole have been a force for raising pay and benefits for those with lower income. The percentage of workers belonging to unions has had a marked decline in the US not mirrored in other affluent countries such as America's neighbor Canada, despite a similarity in the "structural features" of the two countries economies and their workers' "propensities to join a union." Increase in the relative pay of CEOs in the US—from 24 times the earnings of the typical worker in 1965 to 300 times in 2007—is much greater than in Europe. It takes a different form than those countries—deferred compensation, "guaranteed hours on corporate jets, chauffeurs, personal assistants, apartments, even lucrative consulting