Saturday, September 18, 2010

A Simple Look at Income Inequality -- MoJo

"If you look at the raw CBO figures, they show that a full tenth of the national income has shifted since 1979 to the top 1% of the country. The bottom quintiles have each given up a bit more than two percentage points each, and that adds up to 10% of all earnings. That 10% has flowed almost entirely to very tippy top of the income ladder."
The CBO data is only as recent as 2007, but the trend is clear. Every since the Reagan Era, and except for periods of recession, the bust of the tech bubble, and the recession that followed it and the fall of The Twin Towers, the top 1% of earners has taken the money and run. Ever since  labor lost big in the strike of the air traffic controllers, the middle and lower classes have been losing ground while the ultra-rich have prospered beyond the dreams of Midas himself. Only the top 5-to-1% have managed to improve their income situation over the same period, and not nearly as well as the top 1%. 

And yet the conservatives want to continue this trend, indeed, they demand it, not realizing it is the single most important factor contributing to the deficit, poverty, the decay of our schools and infrastructure, and the dissolution of the middle class.

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