Forum Post: CBO: Top 1% Numbers....
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 26, 2011, 9:38 p.m. EST by groobiecat2
(746)
from Brattleboro, VT
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
http://cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12485
AFTER-TAX INCOME GREW MORE FOR HIGHEST-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS After-tax income for the highest-income households grew more than it did for any other group. (After-tax income is income after federal taxes have been deducted and government transfers—which are payments to people through such programs as Social Security and Unemployment Insurance—have been added.)
CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:
275 percent for the top 1 percent of households, 65 percent for the next 19 percent, Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and 18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.
Not that these statistics matter to the self-enslaved; they want people to be simply be happy to have jobs. This isn't because these people "earned it." No. It's because policy enables them to take the resources out of the economy. These policies also led to the meltdown in 2008.
All boats rose for decades...then, not so much:
Do you have data for your last comment - "all boats rose for decades."
It would seem that poor people never have really seen significant income gains because they are usually uneducated, unskilled, and have no capital to invest. Poor people have always been poor.
you have a point. i should have qualified that--more boats rose overall. but yeah, the poor have always been poor. And they're much poorer now, relatively speaking.
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Figure_5.gif
Check figure 5. Not quite the same stat but I think it shows that the wealth disparity in the country right now is pretty much the average over the last 100 years.
No, that's entirely incorrect. The wealth disparity--as the chart shows in the link from CBO that I posted--has shot up dramatically from 1979 to 2007. That's clear in the graph and the point of the post.
Did you actually look at that graph I put up? Yes, it has increased since 1979, but the 1970's represented a 100-year low in disparity. The levels we see today are entirely in line with the levels we have seen over that last 100 years. Wealth disparity is nothing new in the US, in both good and bad economies. I am not quite sure why it has become such a big deal the past few years.
Yes, it is an ever widening gap. I would assume the gap has been expanding for almost all of US history though. Rich people will always grow their wealth at a faster rate because they have more capital, good jobs, smarter, etc.
amen