Another Marie Antoinette Moment

There is no shortage of numbers and studies detailing the widening gap between what American companies pay workers and the millions of dollars those same companies pay top executives. But just in case anyone hasn't been paying attention, here enters David Brooks, chief executive of the bulletproof vest manufacturer DHB Industries Inc., to provide a fuller picture.

Mr. Brooks has made hundreds of millions of dollars through the company, principally from federal and municipal contracts for bulletproof vests. But while 18,000 of those vests were being recalled by the United States military, some from Iraq, Mr. Brooks was in the midst of throwing a private party for his daughter and her friends at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center.

The bash was headlined by a list of performers that could easily have carried the Super Bowl halftime extravaganza. The superstar rapper 50 Cent and the front men from the rock group Aerosmith were among the night's many performers. According to The Daily News in New York, the party's estimated $10 million price tag - a figure Mr. Brooks albeit called greatly exaggerated - culminated with guests reportedly walking out carrying gift bags valued at $1,000 each, stocked with digital cameras and video iPods.

Mr. Brooks is free to spend his money as he pleases, but he might have thought better than to draw added attention to his company right now. The November recall of the vests was the second by the military in 2005. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the company and Mr. Brooks. And the company is also the target of several shareholder lawsuits after a material in some of its body armor failed a federal safety test.

Meanwhile, the party came less than three months after the release of a report on ballooning pay for chief executives that singled out Mr. Brooks for making $70 million in 2004 compared with $525,000 in pre-Iraq-war 2001. The report said he made an additional $186 million in 2004 selling company stock.

The same report, by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning research center, and United for a Fair Economy, a group seeking to narrow the gap between rich and poor, found that in 2004 the ratio of C.E.O. pay to worker pay at large companies had ballooned to 431 to 1. If the minimum wage had advanced at the same rate as chief executive compensation since 1990, America's bottom-of-the-barrel working poor would be enjoying salad days, with legal wages at $23.03 an hour instead of $5.15.

In the go-go days of the Internet bubble, these kinds of statistics were easy to ignore because it felt as if anyone could be the next millionaire and surely the rising tide would lift all boats. Now corporate profits are being wrung in large part from cost cutting like reductions to worker health care and retirement, layoffs and plant closings.

It would be nice to see corporate America put more effort - and money - into quality control and fair living wages for workers and less into exorbitant pay packages and bonuses for corporate chieftains. We remain hopeful, although we can't help but think that while the average American will read about Mr. Brooks's war-windfall party at the Rainbow Room and feel queasy, someone in the ranks of the super-rich might take it as a challenge and check to see if the Taj Mahal is available for birthday parties.