New income figures: richest get even richer
By
G. Dunkel
Published Dec 8, 2006 11:03 PM
The old Marxist aphorism is being proven yet again. The rich are
getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. In fact, the
richest of the rich in the United States are getting wealthier
faster than just the merely rich, while people in the bottom 90
percent have basically seen their incomes stagnate over the past
15 years, moving up and down with the economic tides.
The most detailed technical analysis of the income gap comes from
two academic economists, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who
rely on data released by the IRS. These figures have a two-year
lag, but the authors point out that press reports and anecdotal
data show the trends established between 1990 and 2004 have if
anything intensified over the past two years.
(elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/pikettyqje.pdf)
There was a deep chasm in 2004 between the very wealthy, the
people in the top 1 percent whose family incomes averaged
$326,270, and the rest of this country. The median family income
that year was $43,389, meaning half the population earned less
than that, and generally reflected the earnings of two or more
people working in the household.
In constant dollars adjusted for inflation, the mean income has
actually declined slightly since 1990, even as the incomes of the
wealthy have vastly expanded. (wikipedia.org)
From 1990 to 2004, according to Piketty and Saez, the average
family income of the top 1 percent of the population grew by 53
percent, while the bottom 90 percent saw their total incomes
increase by just 2 percent. But the richer people were, the more
their incomes increased. So the top one-tenth of 1
percent—with average family incomes of
$2,018,910—enjoyed an increase of 85 percent over the same
time period. And, dividing even further, the top one-tenth of
that group wallowed in a jump of 112 percent. These top of the
top have an average family income of $12,775,016.
This data is very broad and doesn’t catch income
disparities based on gender. It doesn’t reflect what has
happened to Black people in the United States, who average about
73 percent the income of their white counterparts, according to
the Urban League.
It doesn’t distinguish between wage income of workers and
the income of capitalists, who get their wealth mostly through
various forms of profits. Wages alone put very few people into
the top 1 percent. And it is not just income, but ownership of
the means of production, that defines who become part of the
ruling class.
These figures also don’t reflect the increased costs of
housing, health care and education that are leaving so many
workers deep in debt.
What the figures do show, however, is that income disparity in
the U.S. in recent years has become greater than at any time
since 1929—the year the bubble burst and the Great
Depression began.
That disaster laid the basis for a huge working class struggle
that spurred the formation of industrial unions and eventually
won government social programs to alleviate poverty—like
welfare, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage and Social
Security. While these programs helped workers survive and get a
living wage, they did not change the underlying tendency of
capitalism to create poles of extreme wealth and extreme poverty,
which will continue until another great working class struggle
erupts.
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