CBO: Income inequality gap hit record high in 2006.
CBO: Income inequality gap hit record high in 2006.
Arloc Sherman of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities writes today that “new data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that in 2006, the top 1 percent of households had a larger share of the nation’s after-tax income, and the middle and bottom fifths of households had smaller shares, than in any year since 1979, the first year the CBO data cover.” According to Sherman, this means that “the gaps in after-tax incomes between households in the top 1 percent and those in the middle and bottom fifths were the widest on record“:
Top incomes continued climbing in the 1990s, to 20.6 times higher than the middle fifth of households in 2000 and 21.3 times higher in 2005. By 2006, top incomes were 23.0 times higher than those of the middle fifth — nearly tripling the income gap between the top 1 percent and those in the middle since 1979.
The gap between the top 1 percent and the poorest fifth of Americans widened even more dramatically over this same period. In 1979, the incomes of the top 1 percent were 22.6 times higher than those of the bottom fifth. Top incomes continued climbing to 63.1 times higher in 2000 and 72.7 times higher by 2006 — more than tripling the rich-poor gap in 27 years.
Sherman adds that “taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top than at any time since 1929.”
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This is where I say…
… Thank goodness McBarbie lost.
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April 17th, 2009 at 3:10 pmWell no wonder the teabaggers are protesting taxing the wealthiest….
snark
April 17th, 2009 at 3:11 pmRanks right up there with water is wet in the revelation category.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:12 pmThis could be interpreted as successful bush economic policies. That is what they were trying to do, isn’t it?
April 17th, 2009 at 3:17 pmWhat’s the problem? Top execs are clearly 23 times smarter and more motivated than the middle class — just ask Daryll.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:18 pmBushie helped the “haves and have mores?”
DO TELL.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:21 pmI wonder which side of the argement Joe the Unlicensed non-plumber will come out on this one?
April 17th, 2009 at 3:24 pm… and this is why Bill Clinton was actually a liberal Republican.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:27 pmWhat does that brief period from 2000 to 2002 represent? It drops down during that time before spiking back up. What was going on then?
April 17th, 2009 at 3:28 pmI wonder if that CNBC loudmouthed dipstick, Rick Santelli, will be screaming about that from the floor of the Stock Exchange, as he did about having a “Chicago Tea Party.”
April 17th, 2009 at 3:29 pmIf the poor didn’t want to be poor they should have been born to rich parents. duh…
April 17th, 2009 at 3:29 pmCurlew,
You mean Joe, the anti-union unlicensed non-plumber, the wanna be singer, the G(no)Pundit, taxdodging teabagger, international correspondit…
… That Sam?
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April 17th, 2009 at 3:32 pmVarecia,
April 17th, 2009 at 3:36 pmPOP went the Tech-bubble…
Half of America would respond “how horrible” and the other half would say “mission accomplished”. And that’s the whole problem isn’t it.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:36 pmTo ask the obvious, and how did that play out in the 1920s ?
And if it wasn’t good, how come the sitting president didn’t do anything about it ?
April 17th, 2009 at 3:39 pmthe new data suggest greater income concentration at the top than at any time since 1929.”
1929… 1929… why does that year sound familiar?
April 17th, 2009 at 3:43 pmThe tea-baggers fail to realize its them that are getting tea-bagged by supporting the 1%’s tax cuts
As we have seen over the last 8+ years tax-cuts did not create jobs…we have lost jobs.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:44 pmSeanHanniTeaBag.biz
April 17th, 2009 at 3:48 pm1929…they still made Dusenbergs?
April 17th, 2009 at 3:49 pmCan you say C-L-A-S-S W-A-R-F-A-R-E? I thought you could.
April 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pmTop incomes continued climbing in the 1990s, to 20.6 times higher than the middle fifth of households in 2000 and 21.3 times higher in 2005. By 2006, top incomes were 23.0 times higher than those of the middle fifth — nearly tripling the income gap between the top 1 percent and those in the middle since 1979.
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Oh come on already. When are you libs going to quit wailing and whining over a bunch of meaningless, unproven numbers? Multiplication is only a THEORY!
April 17th, 2009 at 3:59 pmNow this is worth a PROTEST!!
April 17th, 2009 at 4:00 pmIn today’s world people don’t just stalk other people, they stalk entire countries (see Dick Cheney).
April 17th, 2009 at 4:01 pmIn my heart of hearts, I always knew 2×3=hubris…
VINDICATION IS MINE!
April 17th, 2009 at 4:02 pmDepressions, it seems, are a great transfer of wealth
April 17th, 2009 at 4:08 pmTrickle down….more like piss on the have nots.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:14 pmBobwurst Says:
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If the poor didn’t want to be poor they should have been born to rich parents. duh…
http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Mattos1.html
“An amazing fact: 80% of millionaires are first generation millionaires; they have made their money on their own, in their lifetime. Many of these folks have been immigrants to the U.S., starting out with minimal cash on hand. Work hard to learn and generate wealth—it CAN be done, and happens in America every day.”
April 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pmApril 17th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Actually, reality is even worse. Income inequality is nowhere near as stark as wealth inequality.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pmHmmm… household income. Interesting, since we all know that the number of wage-earing members of a household hasn’t changed one iota since 1979.
I wonder what the numbers would be if we looked at individual incomes, instead? Naaah, we won’t dare do that, it might not fit the narrative, you know.
Hasta,
April 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pmcicero – what did you mean by that?
April 17th, 2009 at 4:24 pmHere’s a different perspective:
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/tax-policy/library/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf
Later,
April 17th, 2009 at 4:26 pmI can’t believe 30 posts and no trolls exclaiming how “the poor don’t pay ANY taxes!”….they must all be tired from having tea parties.
What they fail to realize is you can’t pay taxes on income you never receive, so the income tax is the rare exception where the poor and middle class can get a break. Taxes on gasoline, property, and most goods and services are still paid at the same rate as the rich–except the middle class and poor have much less money with which to pay taxes.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:29 pmtombaker Says:
I would suspect that the percentage of two wage-earner households (usually the parents in the family) has had just a wee bit of a decline (rising divorce rates, to give just one example) since 1979, and I wonder if this study takes that into account in its calculations?
If it does, well then, I’ll have a lot of egg on my face won’t I. But if it doesn’t…
Hasta,
April 17th, 2009 at 4:31 pmXisithrus Says:
As we have seen over the last 8+ years tax-cuts did not create jobs…we have lost jobs.
Ah, but if you employ some other wingnut beliefs, it all makes sense. Remember how they kept blaming Clinton for everything that went wrong during Dubya’s term? Clearly, they believe that it can take anywhere from five to eight years for decisions and other indicators to actually make an impact in our lives. So according to this chart, the prosperity that is sure to flourish from so much income concentration will occur sometime in 2011-2014. We just have to wait. So if things do get better in the next few years, that will totally vindicate Dubya.
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JohnM Says:
“An amazing fact: 80% of millionaires…”
I’m looking for the source cited by the advertisement you linked to. Can’t find it. How do they define “millionaire?” Does that include small business owners?
At the wealth levels we’re talking about here, a million or two is chump change.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:32 pmCicero Says:
Hmmm… household income. Interesting, since we all know that the number of wage-earing members of a household hasn’t changed one iota since 1979.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
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Does it really matter if it’s one earner making 1/23rd of the top percentile versus two earners making 1/23rd of the top percentile?
And if so, doesn’t that rather enhance the narrative? If it was mainly one-income households in 1979, what does it say now that households with two incomes are just as far behind in the income gap?
April 17th, 2009 at 4:33 pmLisa FTW Says:
So true. And guess what, you can thank Pres. Obama for signing into law a huge increase in one of the most regressive taxes (in terms of impact) we’ve got, namely, the tobacco tax.
That alone will more than offset the $8-$13 per week “tax cut” that just recently went into effect.
Later,
April 17th, 2009 at 4:35 pmElBruce Says:
I’m looking for the source cited by the advertisement you linked to. Can’t find it. How do they define “millionaire?” Does that include small business owners?
At the wealth levels we’re talking about here, a million or two is chump change.
http://www.businessdevalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/millionaire-next-door.pdf
I would think a millionaire is rich.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:40 pmI don’t know. I agree that the Fox News personalities in this post are loathsome cretins, but on the lesser point of whether torture “works”, I’m not clear. In every interview I’ve seen of American POWs, they describe some point at which they were “broken”, and told their captors everything they knew. In that sense, I’d say it works. Whether that is what torture is really trying to accomplish is a different issue altogether (I think it’s really a way of sending a message to the enemy of what’s going to happen to them if they’re captured).
April 17th, 2009 at 4:43 pmBullshit. I don’t pay one penny of the tobacco tax. It won’t affect my tax cut even a little bit.
I don’t smoke.
Try again.
(Oh, and, as far as you two-income households go, I’m willing to bet that the increase in families with two working parents rather than one working parent-one homemaking parent in the last thirty years more than offsets the decline you’re talking about coming from divorces.)
April 17th, 2009 at 4:45 pmOne more, from the same study I linked to before: (pg 15) (Emphasis added)
Hasta,
April 17th, 2009 at 4:46 pmJohnM, did you really intend that link to prove something? Or did you just count on no one clicking through?
Seriously, dude, you’ve got to try a little harder than that.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:46 pmCicero, that’s a terrible strawman argument! I’m addressing the issue of income disparity and taxes.
The number of smokers has decreased steadily over the last couple of decades.
People have a choice on whether to pay tobacco taxes directly–don’t buy tobacco, don’t pay the tax. The great majority of us don’t buy, or need tobacco. Utilities, gasoline and property taxes are another issue entirely.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:47 pmI note that the time period includes the second Clinton administration, a period in which the income gap narrowed and economic expansion was shared by a wider portion of the population than had been the case over the previous fifteen years:
During the past 25 years, however, Saez said “the top [10 percent] share has increased dramatically … and has now regained its prewar level.”
The gap closed a bit from 1993 to 2000, when Bill Clinton was president, the top two tax rates went up and the economy boomed. Saez found real incomes grew by 2.4 percent a year for the bottom 99 percent, while the top 1 percent had a 10.1 percent annual increase then.
Only the rich gained much during the Bush years of 2002 to 2006, however. The top 1 percent saw real annual pretax incomes grow at an 11 percent clip, while everyone else’s income grew at an annual rate of 0.9 percent.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:51 pmi’m getting good and sick of the neo-feudalist apologetics that come wrapped in condescsencion and faux-intellectualism, delivered by vain and nihilistic water-carriers like cicero and johnm.
the founders would’ve ridden them out of town on rail.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:02 pmNews Corps has 60 shell companies in tax havens. Carl Levin’s report on tax cheats:
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=308945
The wealthy don’t care how much you raise their tax rate, they’ll evade paying them anyway.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:08 pmI’m looking for the source cited by the advertisement you linked to. Can’t find it. How do they define “millionaire?” Does that include small business owners?
At the wealth levels we’re talking about here, a million or two is chump change.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:36 pmralph the wonder locust Says:
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JohnM, did you really intend that link to prove something? Or did you just count on no one clicking through?
Seriously, dude, you’ve got to try a little harder than that.
It proved that most millionaires are not born into money.
April 17th, 2009 at 5:49 pmThat ratio has become obscene. My of these CEO’s ran their companies into the ground. There reward should have been a pink slip — without a golden parachute.
April 17th, 2009 at 8:04 pmJohnM Says:
I would think a millionaire is rich.
Sure you would. So would I. But if you had to pin me down, I’d call that “upper middle class.” That is, if we’re talking about total assets rather than gross yearly income (which we almost always are). Those aren’t the people the left is talking about, nor are they the people adversely affected by Obama’s tax plan.
That seems to be a pretty common wingnut tactic – conflating the “comfortable” with the “obscenely rich,” and pretending there’s no gap between the two, even though they’re very, very far apart.
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JohnM Says:
It proved that most millionaires are not born into money.
And I was pointing out that a 2009 “millionaire” is nothing like a 1909 “millionaire.”
April 17th, 2009 at 9:37 pmAny defenders of Reganomics out there??? I would hope not.
April 17th, 2009 at 11:27 pmLisa FTW Says:
People have a choice on whether to pay tobacco taxes directly–don’t buy tobacco, don’t pay the tax.
You are exactly correct. People have a choice. A choice to devote everything to being filthy rich and the choice to live only an accommodating life-style and having riches of life. Who exactly is holding the 99% back? Who is keeping the 99% from devoting there lives to earning money and taking risks to reep the rewards of investment? Do the 99% have the choice to work 90 hour work-weeks? W Bush aside, who cares how rich the top 1% are if it is not through ill-gotten gains that they have become rich? Richness only has comparative meaning and relative value. I am fine with being financially comforatable while Bill Gates could buy a small (or large) island. I do not feel the need to get a share of his value, and I depend only on my work ethic to reep what I sew.
April 18th, 2009 at 3:45 amOK Pat obviously senile dementia has set in. Time to see the nice young men that will need to take care of you soon.burun estetigi rent a car arac kiralama
April 18th, 2009 at 5:10 amsac ekimi
Max Anax junius -1 Says:
Varecia,
POP went the Tech-bubble…
Oh, yeah! Duh on my part….
April 18th, 2009 at 10:07 amHas any one asked Joe the Liar for comment yet?
April 18th, 2009 at 8:16 pmI’ll bet he’ll have all kinds of ways to spin this as a good thing.
As soon as his handlers feed him his lines.
Dance monkey! Dance!
Post #21: Toasterhead Blogosphere:
Oh come on already. When are you libs going to quit wailing and whining over a bunch of meaningless, unproven numbers? Multiplication is only a THEORY!
Hey Toasterhead Blogosphere, if you need help with fitting your new tin foil hat to your head, let us know. We’ll use “our” math to help size one up for you.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:42 pmPost #27: JohnM:
“An amazing fact: 80% of millionaires are first generation millionaires; they have made their money on their own, in their lifetime. Many of these folks have been immigrants to the U.S., starting out with minimal cash on hand. Work hard to learn and generate wealth—it CAN be done, and happens in America every day.”
I personally don’t have a problem with self-made successful people – I have a problem with their behaviors while and after they’ve made their money. About the immigrants: I wonder how many people they had to fu*k over to get their wealth. If you’ve ever worked in the stab-you-in-the-back corporate America, you’d understand. Once these jerks get their money – look out! They become even more ruthless to “protect” their personal gains. Unchecked power = unfettered corruption.
Lastly, for every study someone has proving something, there will be another study disapproving so, this is a moot never ending discussion. The only proof we have is actions and in the last 30-years, the actions have been despicable at best.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:56 pmPost 37: Cicero Says:
So true. And guess what, you can thank Pres. Obama for signing into law a huge increase in one of the most regressive taxes (in terms of impact) we’ve got, namely, the tobacco tax.
That alone will more than offset the $8-$13 per week “tax cut” that just recently went into effect.
Cicero, you must be a smoker in order to defend this tax on the cancer sticks. I used to smoke and quit when they hit 2 bucks in 1992. I have never felt better. I have no sympathy for the complainers when it comes to taxing the “legal poisions” of the world.
April 18th, 2009 at 10:05 pm