The Rise of the Super-Rich

[Minnesota_Lib]

New York Times

July 19, 2006
Talking Points
The Rise of the Super-Rich

By TERESA TRITCH

<snip>

But in the United States today, there's a new twist to the familiar
plot. Income inequality used to be about rich versus poor, but now
it's increasingly a matter of the ultra rich and everyone else. The
curious effect of the new divide is an economy that appears to be
charging ahead, until you realize that the most of the people in it are
being left in the dust. President Bush has yet to acknowledge the true
state of affairs, though it's at the root of his failure to convince
Americans that the good times are rolling.

The president's lack of attention may be misplaced optimism, or it
could be political strategy. Acknowledging what's happening would
mean having to rethink his policies, not exactly his strong suit.

<snip>

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank,
compared the latest data from Mr. Piketty and Mr. Saez to comprehensive
reports on income trends from the Congressional Budget Office. Every
way it sliced the data, it found a striking share of total income
concentrated at the top(pdf) of the income ladder as of 2004.

- The top 10 percent of households had 46 percent of the nation's
income, their biggest share in all but two of the last 70 years.

- The top 1 percent of households had 19.5 percent (see graph).

- The top one-tenth of 1 percent of households actually received nearly
half of the increased share going to the top 1 percent.

These disparaties seem large, and they are. (Though the latest availabe
data is from 2004, there are virtually no signs that the basic trend
has changed since then.) The top 1 percent held a bigger share of total
income than at any time since 1929, except for 1999 and 2000 during the
tech stock bubble. But what makes today's disparities particularly
brutal is that unlike the last bull market of the late 1990's - when
a proverbial rising tide was lifting all boats - the rich have been
the only winners lately. According to an analysis by Goldman Sachs, for
most American households - the bottom 60 percent - average income
grew by less than 20 percent from 1979 to 2004, with virtually all of
those gains occurring from the mid- to late 1990's. Before and since,
real incomes for that group have basically flatlined.

The best-off Americans are not only winning by an extraordinary margin
right now. They are the only ones who are winning at all.

<snip>
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Sorry, the original article is on TimesSelect with a paid subscription required, however, this link should take you to a full reposting on Google newgroups.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.bush/msg/2802b62026eb9cc7?

[CrispyQ]

1. I read an article recently that said that Americans

are trinket rich but asset poor. We have computers, Ipods, & electronic gizmos to no end, but we are poor in housing, health care & education.

[jwirr]

2. I would say that about describes it. There is a reason for that

though. Housing and education are out of reach for many of us while we can still afford the occasional medical bill and the gadgets. I do not think the American worker would be so unhappy if he could still hope to own a home, send his kids to school and take care of health needs - and also food and heat, of course.