From Campaign for America’s Future: http://ourfuture.org/20130911/recovery-for-the-rich-recession-for-the-rest
Richard Eskow
September 11, 2013
Five years after the financial crisis, it’s become increasingly apparent that the government didn’t rescue “the economy.” It rescued the wealthy, while doing far too little for everyone else.
That didn’t happen by accident. Our government’s response was largely designed by – and for – the wealthiest among us, and it shows. Here’s one highlight from a new analysis: The highest-earning Americans saw their income rise by nearly one-third in a single year, while the needle barely moved for 99 percent of us.
This post-crisis inequality is amplifying an ongoing wealth grab that was already decimating middle-class and lower-income Americans.
Recovery for the Rich
New figures on wealth inequality from economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez show that the top 10 percent earned more than half of our nation’s income. That hasn’t happened since they started tracking these figures a century ago.
What about the bottom 99 percent? After being left out of the post-crisis boom, they finally saw an increase in their earnings last year – but it was only a paltry 1 percent.
By contrast, income for the top 1 percent rose 20 percent. And the really rich, the top 0.01 percent, saw their income soar by more than 32 percent.
Recession America
These recent gains build on decades of wealth transfer from the majority to the already-wealthy minority. That shift has replaced the productive earnings of lower- and middle-class Americans with the far less fruitful gains of the already rich. While income to the “99 percent” is largely spent on goods and services, creating jobs and growth, income to the already-wealthy is increasingly sitting idle.
As the Economic Policy Institute recently observed, “The median worker saw an increase of just 5.0 percent between 1979 and 2012, despite productivity growth of 74.5 percent—while the 20th percentile worker saw wage erosion of 0.4 percent …”
What’s more, the pace of inequity seems to be accelerating. In his write-up of their new research, Emmanuel Saez notes that the top 1 percent saw their income nearly double between 1993 and 2000, rising 98.7 percent, while income for the rest rose by 20.3 percent. Over the last four years the top 1 percent saw their income rise by 31.4 percent, while the bottom 99 percent only saw real growth of 0.4 percent.
Continue reading at: http://ourfuture.org/20130911/recovery-for-the-rich-recession-for-the-rest
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