Study Says: Income Inequality At An All-Time High In America
From Huffington Post:
Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers “truly amazing.”
Though income inequality has been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of wealth distribution in America. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000.
As of 2007, the top decile of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that’s “higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the ‘roaring” 1920s.’”
Beginning in the economic expansion of the early 1990s, Saez argues, the economy began to favor the top tiers American earners, but much of the country missed was left behind. “The top 1 percent incomes captured half of the overall economic growth over the period 1993-2007,” Saes writes.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
This pretty much sums up something that any “average” American already has known since the 1970’s.
When gullible American workers were given the choice between establishing a 401k, as opposed to a fully insured vested pension…that was the end of the “American Dream”
Corporates are sucking the very lifeblood out of the American people, except those that are “in the game”….and it is truly sad, that the American people, as a whole…are being divided, and kept divided, by corporates that control the mainstream media.
It’s known as “divide, and conquer”.
NOT, United We Stand.
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August 16th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
I agree with Donaldinks that this study is just stating the obvious. The good thing though is that this will help us gauge whether we are making progress or not, with regards to wealth concentration, under Obama.
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