Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: Study

[Newsjock]

Source: Huffington Post

Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes. On his blog, Nobel prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called the numbers "truly amazing."

Though income inequality has been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of wealth distribution in America. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000.

As of 2007, the top decile of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that's "higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the 'roaring" 1920s.'"

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259516.html

[imdjh]

1. Single Payer would go a long way towards income equality

Part of the reason we don't have nearly the number of small businesses to do business with is because responsible people can't open up a store or shop without health insurance.

My neighborhood garage charges pretty close to Walmart on tires. He has no health insurnance, so if he or a family member gets really sick, there goes another small business.

Small businesses come and go around here, and part of it is because it simply isn't worth it to work you ass off (or even simply to work very long hours) and not even have health insurance, when you can go work for the cable company and have benefits as long as you are willing to be enslaved in the cube farm.

[caseymoz]

14. Which is why the gilded classes are fighting it with napalm.

Anything that reduces their wealth, at all, is a threat to them. So what if another business can't open.

[Juche]

32. Single payer, EFCA, progressive taxes

All necessary to reverse this trend.

[Laelth]

2. k&r for exposure. American capitalism is evil and is in major need of reform. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[Deja Q]

15. It's out of sync, it's not - by definition - evil.

[Laelth]

30. Ultimately, I agree with you.

I am a liberal. I want to preserve Capitalism by saving it from its own excesses. In it's current form in the United States, however, I must insist that it is evil. It could be made much less evil, to be sure. That's what I'd like the Democratic Party to do--make the American capitalism less evil. When I'm optimistic, I even hope Capitalism can be made fair, equitable, and just ... but I am not in an optimistic mood at the moment.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Deja Q]

36. And I agree with you.

:)

Things have genuinely become unjust; dozens of graphs and charts are NOT wrong.

The wealthy claim that socialists want to redistribute the wealth. It is also redistribution when they stomp on and exploit everyone else just to get more money out of them.

It works both ways, but it's evil of them to say or allude fair wages are redistribution under the currently prevailing circumstances. Like the RIAA claiming the little girl stole $2 million worth of music or whatever. Is their restitution going to those who did the work? Or the upper echelon's pockets, who do nothing but masturbate on golf courses and call that work?

[Scruffy1]

29. Capitalism

Uncontrolled capitalism has always resulted in disaster throughout human history. More wars have been fought over MONEY than religion. The religion part just gives cover to greed whether it was the Spaniards after gold or Exxon after oil.

[Laelth]

31. Welcome to DU!

I agree with the argument you make in your post. Thanks for the response.

:dem:

-Laelth

[county worker]

3. I was just thinking. Where in the Constitution does it say our economic system has to be

capitalist?

If life and the pursuit of happiness are basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution and our present economic system denies any of these to a large part of the citizenry why not use some socialism to correct the problem?

In that light health care is also a right since you can't have life in many cases without health care. Also the notion that the government should promote the general welfare means to me that if our present economic system works against that we should adopt some socialist ideas to correct it.

Democratic Socialists of American has good ideas on this.

http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html

[Libertas1776]

5. oh county worker

you just don't get it, do you? Your so young, but you will understand one day the marvelous equality in our capitalist system. :sarcasm: I believe I can better elaborate with a fine piece of oratory posited by a health care reform opponent at a town hall discourse in NH. I believe the eloquent gentlemen said something to this effect: "The Founding Fathers blah blah socialism evil blah blah big gub'mint blah blah blah I'm scared of Obama the Marxist Fascist Kenyan blah blah blah baba booey baba booey Howard Stern's penis baba booey." Truer words have never been spoken.

[barbtries]

7. thank you

made me laugh for real

[silverweb]

8. Indeed.

DSA has good ideas on a lot of things. Too bad the American people have been so innoculated against that word, "socialist."

Many, if not most, absolutely equate it with totalitarian communism, while nothing could be farther from the truth.

It's so frustrating.

[xchrom]

4. we don't need just jobs -- though god knows we need those --

we need pay raises.

this is an important corner stone -- and it's political -- to the 'it's the economy' stupid' strategy.

what the fuck is the sense of living in a democracy and allowing a few to gather in all the benefits -- and have them denied to you?

[Deja Q]

37. *ding* *ding* *ding* we have a winner

+10,000,000

[barbtries]

6. it's a sick statistic

we all only have 24 hours in a day. one person's time cannot be worth THAT MUCH MORE than another's. not that much.

[wilt the stilt]

9. trickle down works

as planned

[caseymoz]

18. You mean it once "worked." Now they've fixed it.

And let's face it, why wouldn't you want to fix a leak? The "trickle down" metaphor always sounded particularly insulting to me. It made the non-wealthy getting paid sound like an accident, and one that the wealthy would make often.

Another comparison, a Biblical one, that had long before become cliched but which would have been just as accurate: the poor living off the crumbs that drop off the table of the rich. Except the poor are to be all the rest of us.

It seems at the time it was being politically formulated somebody should have spotted that "trickle down economics" was actually "crumb economics" with plumbing instead of food.

We're soon going to be told how the economy is booming while there are no jobs. One sign that the rich are getting yet, richer.

[Igel]

10. Does that mean we can

discuss 2009's income inequality in 2011?

The first sentence of your excerpt should, of course, be, "Income inequality in the United States was recently, and may still be, at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression. . . ."

2007, pre-recession, top of the bull market, just after the peak in housing prices. The "Great Depression" reference seems to be trying to make the comparison between the Great Depression and the current "Great Recession," but even a dullard reader would know that no such comparison is possible, at least not currently.

Note that many states that have moderate to very progressive income tax structures are seriously hurting for tax revenue. If it were entirely working-class taxpayers facing reduced earned incomes, that wouldn't be the case. I suspect for 2009 the numbers will show a decline--probably not huge decline since they haven't shown much volatility at all, but "all time high" probably won't be the case.

[xchrom]

24. would you care to provide links?

'Note that many states that have moderate to very progressive income tax structures are seriously hurting for tax revenue. If it were entirely working-class taxpayers facing reduced earned incomes, that wouldn't be the case. I suspect for 2009 the numbers will show a decline--probably not huge decline since they haven't shown much volatility at all, but "all time high" probably won't be the case.'

specifically tying in a drop in states revenues to their wealthiest classes.

it would be an interesting notation considering the reluctance in california to tax their wealthiest citizens and the horrific financial straights they find themselves in -- a tax system voted on by the peopl them selves by the wayy -- or let's talk about west virginia where some of the wealthiest people in the country live -- and by comparison -- some of the poorest -- what condition are their states revenues in -- not very good? -- quelle surpise.

[DJ13]

11. Trickled On works

[Orsino]

12. We've been governed by conservatives for decades.

Income inequality is their raison d'etre.

[ProudDad]

13. DOn't forget Clinton I

The best republican money could buy...

[Deja Q]

16. He still did what no Republican could do: Balance the budget properly.

There are times I think he did dumb things too. As with all people, I am willing to step to the side and acknowledge what's good too.

[caseymoz]

22. Couldn't? For real conservatives, deficits are made to cripple liberal programs.

That's the way both Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff thought of them, and there were many conservatives who said this. Conservatism was never about responsible government spending. It was about racking off government spending.

[704wipes]

26. deficits= diversion to plutocrats pockets of govt income streams

via 'privatization'.

[caseymoz]

38. Absolutely right. In fact, if you hate government and love private enterprise,

. . . it totally stands to reason that whatever way you could funnel money to private companies is something good. Not to "undeserving" people, but to industry and business. Conservatism is a license for plutocrats to steal.

[caseymoz]

20. It isn't just that they governed for part of it, it's the influence they had when they didn't.

Their influence on the country has been both corrupting and insidious.

[Orsino]

27. There's not a time in the past several decades when we weren't governed by conservatives...

...who were in turn governed by even more hard-line conservatives.

[caseymoz]

39. You're right. They have guided government even under Democrats.

The process they have used, though, is so devious and multifarious that it defies making such a simple statement about it, which is part of the reason why it has been so hard to fight.

Just look at what they did to Clinton. The fact that he was even moderate with a populist streak, not really in the least liberal except about race, was the major reason they attacked him for everything on every front. They kept him as weak as possible, and even put through "Welfare Reform" with him signing it.

Conservatives have a propaganda arm that would be the envy of Goebbels, and Alpine-size mountains of money from industry, and front organizations worthy of the CIA. They have most every regulator, many elected officials, and many government staffers as "double-agents" for industry. Almost completely they guide the military industrial complex, and have as their card-carrying members the CEO's of most private contracting companies, along with ex- and current intelligence agents who are pretty might be more than willing to try the same tactics in the US that the CIA did in other countries: bringing the Cold War back home, as it were. When George H. W. Bush made "liberal" into a bad word, he was bringing the Cold War home.

I am ranting, but everything I write describes the politics of this country since Reagan, and it reached its fruition with the second Bush, who failed so miserably really due to conservatism's own uncomprehending view of the world, much of the same reason why the CIA failed, being run by people who were mostly wealthy Ivy Leaguers from the bully class.

It is going to take the rest of our lifetimes to correct what happened to our culture when Reagan was elected.

[caseymoz]

17. I see the upper-class has finally fixed that "trickle-down" problem.

Now, they can be assured that nobody will ever get "their" money. Which happens to be all the money in the economy.
They are certainly doing their part to prove Marx right.

[Lagomorph]

19. Well, giving a couple trillion to the banks and businesses...

certainly didn't help that statistic.

[midnight]

21. The TARP bailout boldy reinforces the mechanisms

that this country uses to create this inequality.

[Mosby]

23. delete

[maxsolomon]

25. that's why the Yellowstone Club bankruptcy gives me endless amusement

Suffer, mega-rich!

[senseandsensibility]

28. kick

And there are still those who disagree with taxing the top two percent for healthcare.

[progressoid]

33. sad k/r

[Vidar]

34. This is the "original sin" of American society. Every other form of

societal dysfunction stems from it, and rather than fighting it, Obama has fueled it.

[Deja Q]

35. That's the impression, so far.

Unfortunate, if the President did come from a poor background, he would do better than to fuel it. To really be in a poor situation and get out of it takes more than hard work (which, despite right wing pundits' claims, doesn't always pay off). Luck and beating the odds have more to do with success, particularly in today's conditions.