Since 2009, 88 percent of national income growth has gone to corporate profits, while just one percent has gone to wages, adding another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes have been shrinking and wages stagnating for decades. In fact, according to data analyzed by the Financial Times, workers’ share of national income has fallen to its lowest level on record, and if it were back at the post-war average, workers would earn an additional $740 billion this year:

“We are the 99%”, the slogan of Occupy Wall Street, is a reference to the rising wealth of the top 1 per cent of US income distribution. But an equally valid slogan might be: “We get 58%”.

That figure is the share of US national income that goes to workers as wages rather than to investors as profits and interest. It has fallen to its lowest level since records began after the second world war and is part of the reason why incomes at the top – which tend to be earned from capital – have risen so much. If wages were at their postwar average share of 63 per cent, workers would earn an extra $740bn this year, about $5,000 per worker, according to FT calculations.

This decline in workers’ share of income is actually holding back the national recovery, as “workers on lower wages consume much of their income, while higher wage earners and those with capital income are more likely to save.” Instead of going to the people who are likeliest to spend it, and thus boost the economy, more income is going to corporations and rich people who are just sitting on it. Corporations are actually holding trillions of dollars in cash reserves (and clamoring for more tax breaks), money that could create millions of jobs if it were deployed in a different fashion.

In the aftermath of the recession, states across the country have cut their budgets, in turn forcing cities and towns in those states to make their own drastic cuts. Different towns have made different decisions, with some closing libraries, un-paving roads, closing schools, and even attempting to decriminalize domestic violence, all in efforts to save money.

In November, Highland Park, Michigan decided it could no longer afford to pay the electric bill and shut off its street lights. And despite the fact that such a move saves little money and could jeopardize public safety, New Paris, Ohio is following suit, announcing this week that it too will shut off its street lights when it ends its contract with a local electrical company at the end of the month, as WDTN reports:

Officials say the village’s funding from the state has been slashed by 25-percent and another 25-percent will be cut next year.

So to try to make ends meet, the village is preparing to end its contract with Dayton Power and Light at the end of the month.

That would save more than $17,000, but leaders fear it could also cost villagers in safety.

Towns and cities across Ohio have felt the crunch from Gov. John Kasich’s (R) budget cuts, and decisions like the one New Paris made could have been avoided had Kasich and his Republican colleagues not preserved millions in benefits for the rich and corporations. Ohio Republicans cut the state’s estate tax, lowered its income tax in a way that benefited those with incomes over $200,000, and preserved multiple special interest tax breaks to benefit corporations.

None of that, of course, has brought the job creation and prosperity Kasich promised upon taking office. Instead, he’s decided to uphold his duty to protect public safety by leaving prison guard towers empty and forcing local towns like New Paris to black out their streets.

A new study from Congress’ Joint Economic Committee (JEC) debunks the prevailing conservative notion that Unemployment Insurance (UI) dissuades people from looking for a job. “On the contrary,” the report finds, “beneficiaries of federal UI benefits have spent more time searching for work than those who were ineligible for UI benefits.” “In fact, since Congress enacted federal unemployment benefits, time spent looking for a job has tripled among the long‐term unemployed who are out of work as a result of job loss,” the report adds.

As this chart shows, while unemployment rose during the recession, people who received UI benefits spent more time looking for work than those who didn’t qualify for the federal program:

And this makes sense. Federal unemployment insurance requires recipients to actively look for new work, and also gives them more flexibility to do. Someone with no job and no UI benefits will likely have to focus first on paying bills on a day-to-day basis before finding a job for the long-term.

And while some studies have attributed UI benefits to marginal increases (less than 2 weeks) in the length someone remains unemployed, the JEC report concludes that this minor effect is “simply because some of those unemployed workers would have otherwise dropped out of the labor force, discouraged by lack of job prospects” were it not for their UI benefits.

Our guest blogger is Sarah Jane Glynn, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

President Obama, as part of his continuing effort to ensure equitable treatment to home care workers, introduced a new rule today that would finally extend federal minimum wage and overtime protections to workers who provide home-based care to the elderly and people with disabilities.

The truth is, baby-boomers are getting old and somebody has to take care of them. The first boomers started reaching 65 this year, and for the next 18 years about 8,000 people will turn 65 every day. By 2050, 1 in 5 Americans will be over the age of 65.

People are living longer now than ever before due to better nutrition, greater access to healthcare, and innovations in medical technology. However, nearly 20 percent of those over the age of 65 need help with the basic activities of daily living, and the majority of elderly people with disabilities live in the community, not in nursing homes or care facilities.

As a result, home care is a booming industry. Employment in the industry is expected to expand 50 percent by 2018, at which point there will be more than 2.5 million home health aides and personal/home care aides.

Most people, especially those with an elderly or disabled family member who depends on this type of care, would agree that this is an extremely important job that should be reward hard work. And yet, the nearly 2 million home care workers in the United States are currently excluded from minimum wage and overtime protections included in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Read more

The Occupy Wall Street protests began in New York City as a way to bring attention to America’s increasing income inequality and the vast power held by corporations and the nation’s biggest banks. Currently, income inequality in the U.S. is the worst its been since the 1920s, and is even more unequal in New York City itself.

In fact, a recent report from New York City’s Independent Budget Office found that the richest one percent of New Yorkers make more than one-third of the Big Apple’s income:

– The bottom half of the city’s income distribution has 9% of total income; the bottom 80%, 29%. Comparable figures for the U.S. are 19% for the bottom half and 44% for the bottom four-fifths.

– The richest 10% of New Yorkers have 58% of total income, and the richest 5%, 49%. The national average is 42% for the top 10%, and 32% for the top 5%.

– And here’s where the action is, the proverbial 1%: it has 34% of total income, compared with 19% for the U.S. as a whole.

The fact that New York City is the epicenter of the U.S. financial services industry — which now makes up a bigger portion of the economy than it did before the Great Recession — surely drives a lot of this divide. A new Pew Research poll out today finds that “61% of Americans now say the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy,” while 77 percent “say that they think there is too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations.”

Since the 99 Percent Movement protests began across the country, multiple Republican lawmakers and strategists have announced their fear of what they claim are the movement’s attacks on capitalism and America’s free market economy. The protests and Democratic policies, some Republicans have claimed, represent a form of class warfare against the rich. And many have predicted that supporting the movement will come back to haunt Democrats.

But a new poll from the Pew Research Center found that when asked directly about the belief that sparked the 99 Percent Movement — that the rich have too much power and influence in this country — Americans of all political stripes largely agree. Wide majorities of Democrats, independents, and even Republicans, in fact, think the rich are too powerful, and a majority also thinks our economic system unfairly favors the wealthy, as the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent highlighted:

Roughly three-quarters of the public (77%) say that they think there is too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations in the United States. In a 1941 Gallup poll, six-in-ten (60%) Americans expressed this view. About nine-in-ten (91%) Democrats and eight-in-ten (80%) of independents assert that power is too concentrated among the rich and large corporations, but this view is shared by a much narrower majority (53%) of Republicans.

Reflecting a parallel sentiment, 61% of Americans now say the economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy and just 36% say the system is generally fair to most Americans. About three-quarters (76%) of Democrats and 61% of independents say the economic system is tilted in favor of the wealthy; a majority (58%) of Republicans say that the system is generally fair to most Americans.

In addition, Americans also have a skeptical view of Wall Street. A slim majority — 51 percent — thinks Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps, including 60 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents. Just 36 percent think Wall Street helps more than it hurts.

Republican lawmakers who have decried the movement may be shocked by these numbers. But given that their policies have increased prosperity for the 1 percent while driving half of Americans into either poverty or low-income status, they probably shouldn’t be.

2012 GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich — who has surged to the front of the polls — released a tax plan that calls for an optional 15 percent personal income tax and the complete elimination of investment taxes. As we’ve been reporting, the plan would blow a huge hole in the federal budget, causing perpetual trillion dollar deficits even assuming that Gingrich was able to get spending down to new, completely unreasonable lows for the modern era.

Most of the cost of the plan goes to lavishing tax breaks on the very wealthiest Americans. In fact, half of the benefit of Gingrich’s plan goes to the richest one percent of Americans, giving them more in tax cuts than the other 99 percent combined. Millionaires would receive a tax cut of more than $600,000 every year compared to current law.

And those are hardly the only facts about Gingrich’s plan that are worth mentioning. Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden and Director of Fiscal Reform Seth Hanlon have put together ten charts highlighting the absurdity of Gingrich’s proposals. Here are a couple:

See the rest of the charts here.