By Peter Whoriskey, Published: October 26, Washington
Post
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Also check out the
following:
Top of the heap: CEO pay database
Special Report: Breakaway Wealth
An ongoing series about how the rich are
pulling away from the rest of America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/specialreports/inequality
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As Occupy Wall Street and related protests inject
themselves into the 2012 presidential campaigns, a new government report shows
that over the past three decades the incomes of the nation’s top earners have grown far more rapidly
than those of everyone else.
The nation’s economic gains have been increasingly
concentrated in the households of the top 1 percent, according to the
Congressional Budget Office, echoing previous studies cited by Occupy Wall Street protesters.
For the 1 percent of the population with the highest
incomes, average income grew 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, the report
said. Middle-income Americans saw just less than a 40 percent rise during
the same period, while the 20 percent of the population on the bottom saw
an 18 percent increase.
All figures were reported in inflation-adjusted terms
after taxes.
“The distribution of market income
became more unequal almost continuously between 1979 and 2007,” according to the
report from the Congressional Budget Office.
The report comes as the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street movement are increasingly
entering the nation’s political debate.
Some Republicans have largely shrugged off the growing
divide, calling it a distraction from the more important task of expanding
economic opportunity for everyone.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman
of the House Budget Committee, delivered a speech
Wednesday criticizing President Obama’s approach to
taxes and accusing him of scoring political points by dividing Americans.
“The president is barnstorming swing states, pushing a
divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis
of class,” Ryan said, according to a copy of his prepared text. “This just
won’t work in America.
Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile
society with a lot of movement between income groups.”
Obama has shown some sympathy for the Occupy movement, saying it reflects
“broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”
The question of income inequality is also coming up in
the presidential campaigns. On Tuesday, after rolling out his flat-tax proposal, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was forced to defend his
plan after a reporter on CNBC suggested it would amount to “a huge tax cut for
wealthy people in this country.”
“Those that want to get into the class warfare and talk
about, ‘Oh my goodness, there are going to be some folks here who make more
money out of this or have access to more money,’ I’ll let them do that,” Perry responded.
He added that he “doesn’t care” that it might mean millions
of dollars for those at the top.
“What I care about is them having the dollars to invest
in their companies,” Perry said, “to go out and maybe start a business because
they have the confidence again that they actually get to keep more of what they
work for.”
Politically, the inequality issue may play well for Obama. Recent polls show that people believe he is far less
likely to favor the rich than are Republicans.
According to a CBS News-New York
Times poll released this week, about 28 percent of people say the Obama administration favors the rich and about
69 percent said Republicans in Congress favor the rich.
While the numbers released by the CBO are being used to
argue that the government should act to reverse the trend, the effect of tax
policy on the gap seems unclear in the data.
“The major reason for the growing unevenness” is that
income before taxes was so uneven, according to the report.
Moreover, several observers noted that the more
meaningful issue for many Americans is not the income gap but whether Americans
have equality of opportunity.
“The amount of growth of the top 1 percent is
shocking,” said Erin Currier, project manager with the Pew Charitable
Trusts’ Economic Mobility Project. “But the piece that is missing is
income mobility, and what we see there does not reflect the American dream.
We’re not seeing equality of opportunity.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cbo-incomes-of-top-earners-grow-at-a-pace-far-faster-than-everyone-elses/2011/10/26/gIQAHlVFKM_story.html
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View Photo
Gallery — For
the 18th straight year, Bill Gates tops Forbes’s list of the wealthiest
Americans. Despite the economic woes plaguing many Americans, the net worth of
many of the top 10 richest on Forbes’ list grew in 2011.
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