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This is classic agenda reporting. The ones who so worry about how much other people make are almost exclusively on the Left. So we have this article come out today, pretty much out of the blue since there is no event that drives it, in order to reinforce tired leftist tropes about the eeevil rich.
Mr. Wiseman pretty much regurgitates what must have been a press release from a Berkeley professor and his like minded friends. One might wonder why there are no dissenting voices quoted, no contrary information presented, and frankly, no clear presentation of the issue.
You will note that President Obama's name does not appear in the article, but he is the president who has presided over this increased income inequality. This president is supposedly an advocate for the middle class and poor, but Mr. Wiseman tacitly admits that they have suffered more under his administration than any president since the "roaring 20s."
If Bush was president today, is there any doubt that the tone of the article would be substantially different, like this article from 2006? Bush is mentioned prominently, as is a quote from a detractor. Not so in Mr. Wiseman's article.
Mr. Wiseman does not tell us, but I suspect the income figures are raw gross, not adjusted gross or net income after taxes. In fact, there is no discussion at all about the distribution of income taxes paid, which are borne disproportionately by the top 1%. He informs us that they earn (note the word "earn;" they earn their money) 19% of the total income, BUT he does not mention that they also pay more than a third of all income tax collected. Mr. Wiseman also tells us the top 10% earned "a record 48.2% of the income," BUT is silent regarding the fact that they also pay 66% of the income tax.
In addition, the top half of income earners pay 97% of all income taxes, which means the people who are not paying income taxes are the same people who supposedly are not getting their fair share of income. So the bottom 50% of workers bear none of the burden of government and receive a huge amount in the form of wealth transfer.
Mr. Wiseman does tell us that that government benefits like food stamps, subsidies, and other transfer payments are excluded from the calculation, but no mention of how much money that might be. Since the source of that money is the incomes of the very same rich, it seems to me that we need them making money so that the government can help themselves to a part of it and redistribute it to those less fortunate.
Mr. Wiseman then descends into a convoluted explanation of why these things are the way they are. Some contributing factors are mentioned, all of which are leftist markers: Unions, jobs outsourcing, the minimum wage. Absent is any mention of tax policy, regulation, corporate innovation, the effects of war, Social Security, government deficits, or any of a thousand other important factors that influence the economy.
The average reader is then left with the impression that the rich are keeping the rest of us down, and that the historical parallel is the roaring 20s. Truly spectacular journalistic malpractice.
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WASHINGTON — The gulf between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America is the widest it’s been since the Roaring ‘20s.
The very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country’s household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. And the top 10 percent captured a record 48.2 percent of total earnings last year.
U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. And it grew again last year, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.
One of them, Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez, said the incomes of the richest Americans surged last year in part because they cashed in stock holdings to avoid higher capital gains taxes that took effect in January.
In 2012, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose nearly 20 percent compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.
The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. Their incomes fell more than 36 percent in the Great Recession of 2007-09 as stock prices plummeted. Incomes for the bottom 99 percent fell just 11.6 percent, according to the analysis.
But since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 percent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.
That compares with a 45 percent share for the top 1 percent in the economic expansion of the 1990s and a 65 percent share from the expansion that followed the 2001 recession. The top 1 percent of American households had pretax income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.
The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.
The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.
The top 1 percent’s share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis.
Economists point to several reasons for widening income inequality. In some industries, U.S. workers now compete with low-wage labor in China and other developing countries. Clerical and call-center jobs have been outsourced to countries such as India and the Philippines.
The very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country’s household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. And the top 10 percent captured a record 48.2 percent of total earnings last year.
U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. And it grew again last year, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.
One of them, Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez, said the incomes of the richest Americans surged last year in part because they cashed in stock holdings to avoid higher capital gains taxes that took effect in January.
In 2012, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose nearly 20 percent compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.
The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. Their incomes fell more than 36 percent in the Great Recession of 2007-09 as stock prices plummeted. Incomes for the bottom 99 percent fell just 11.6 percent, according to the analysis.
But since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 percent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.
That compares with a 45 percent share for the top 1 percent in the economic expansion of the 1990s and a 65 percent share from the expansion that followed the 2001 recession. The top 1 percent of American households had pretax income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.
The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.
The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.
The top 1 percent’s share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis.
Economists point to several reasons for widening income inequality. In some industries, U.S. workers now compete with low-wage labor in China and other developing countries. Clerical and call-center jobs have been outsourced to countries such as India and the Philippines.
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