IslandDog
Better read whet the Comptroller General said about the impending financial crises that will hit the U.S. as the Boomers retire and we are saddled with the huge National debt. You are kidding yourself if you do not understand the hole we are digging for our children! This is the report released this week about who is benefiting from that economic growth:
TAXING TIMES
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will release a report today showing that for middle-income Americans, the share of income taken by federal taxes has been mostly unchanged for four decades. By comparison, it has fallen by half for those at the very top of the ladder.
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows. The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increaWhile total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data are available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
se of more than $139,000.
The new data also show that the top 300,000 Americans enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
Emmanuel Saez, a University of California at Berkeley economist who analyzed the Internal Revenue Service data with Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, said such growing disparities were significant in terms of social and political stability.
"If the economy is growing but only a few are enjoying the benefits, it goes to our sense of fairness," Saez said. "It can have important political consequences."
Last year, according to other data, incomes for average Americans increased for the first time in several years. But because those at the top rely heavily on the stock market and business profits for their income, both of which were strong last year, it is likely that the disparities in 2005 are the same or larger now, Saez said.
He noted that the analysis was based on preliminary data and that the highest-income Americans were more likely than others to file their returns late, so his data might understate the growth in inequality.
