There are Two Americas, the wealthy and the rest of us. This is the core problem of the last 30 years.
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.
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Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .001 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.'"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
The entire paper is available here. It's worth reading:
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/...
From Saez's paper:
[W]hile the bottom 99 percent of incomes grew at a solid pace of 2.7 percent per year from 1993-2000, these incomes grew only 1.3 percent per year from 2002-2007. As a result, in the economic expansion of 2002-2007, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth."
Paul Krugman comments that it was "even more gilded" than we thought.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...
The charts from Saez at Krugman and HuffPo say it all. Go here to see the chart:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...
This is a version of a diary I did at Docudharma on Friday morning.