Elite benefit as economy stagnates for most

The top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago.  http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?_r=0
The top 1 percent took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans, one of the highest levels on record since 1913, when the government instituted an income tax.

The figures underscore that even after the recession the country remains in a new Gilded Age, with income as concentrated as it was in the years that preceded the Depression of the 1930s, if not more so.

“These results suggest the Great Recession has only depressed top income shares temporarily and will not undo any of the dramatic increase in top income shares that has taken place since the 1970s,” Mr. Saez, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The income share of the top 1 percent of earners in 2012 returned to the same level as before both the Great Recession and the Great Depression: just above 20 percent, jumping to about 22.5 percent in 2012 from 19.7 percent in 2011.

More generally, richer households have disproportionately benefited from the boom in the stock market during the recovery, with the Dow Jones industrial average more than doubling in value since it bottomed out early in 2009. About half of households hold stock, directly or through vehicles like pension accounts. But the richest 10 percent of households own about 90 percent of the stock, expanding both their net worth and their incomes when they cash out or receive dividends.

The economy remains depressed for most wage-earning families. With sustained, relatively high rates of unemployment, businesses are under no pressure to raise their employees’ incomes because both workers and employers know that many people without jobs would be willing to work for less.

2 comments

  1. Reid Mukai's avatar

    Thanks for helping to spread this important information. I believe we are in a depression, and the corporate media is doing everything it can to keep as many people in the dark about it as possible. But the truth of our economic reality will inevitably be known, not only because it’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to ignore, but because of independent journalists and blogs like yours. I’ve also shared similar information on this recent post: http://desultoryheroics.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/no-matter-what-political-reasons-are-given-for-war-the-underlying-reason-is-always-economic-a-j-p-taylor/

    1. truthman_2012's avatar

      in·eq·ui·ty /inˈekwitē/

      noun lack of fairness or justice. “policies aimed at redressing racial inequity” synonyms:unfairness, injustice, unjustness, discrimination, partisanship, partiality, favoritism, bias, prejudice.

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