Number of the Day

$18.4 million: The average income growth, adjusted for inflation, for the top 1% of the top 1% of USians between 1966 and 2011, per an analysis by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston for Tax Analysts.

As you may recall, yesterday's Number of the Day was taken from the same analysis, which found that the average income growth for the bottom 90% of USians during the same period was $59.


Source: Author's calculations from analysis of IRS data by Saez and Piketty.
Chart care of TaxAnalysts.
David Cay Johnston:

Skyrocketing growth at the top and, in recent years, plummeting income for the vast majority caused a major re-slicing of the national income pie. That re-slicing results in large part from tax, employment, and other rule changes that began with President Reagan and intensified under President George W. Bush. The situation changed slightly this year under President Obama, but the rules allow the rich to make their fortunes grow like a giant snowball rolling down a hill.

... Those at the top are pulling away from everyone else not because of hard work, but the shift of income from labor to capital and changes in federal income, gift, and estate tax rules.

The median wage has been stuck since 1999 at a bit more than $500 per week in real terms and job growth has lagged far beyond population growth. But capital gains and dividends have soared, a new Congressional Research Service study shows. And, of course, the rich get most of that income.

Read the whole thing here, and then marvel at the brass audacity of conservatives accusing progressives who want to sufficiently fund a robust social safety net of waging "class warfare."