Reich on Income Distribution
The incomes of the top 1 percent have soared for thirty years while median wages have slowed or declined in real terms. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have shown, in the 1970s the top-earning 1 percent of Americans took home 8 percent of total income; as recently as 1980 they took home 9 percent. After that, total income became more and more concentrated at the top. By 2007, the top 1 percent took home over 22 percent. Meanwhile, even as their incomes dramatically increased, the total federal tax rates paid by the top 1 percent dropped. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 1 percent paid a total federal tax rate of 37 percent three decades ago; now it's paying 31 percent.
[Robert Reich, "Finally a Progressive Budget", Robert Reich's Blog, 27 February 2009.]
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on Saturday, 28 February 2009 at 02.19
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Income concentration is not necessarily a negative.
>>>>median wages have slowed or declined in real terms.
I'm not sure raising the marginal tax rates on the wealthy would have changed this. I'm too lazy at the moment to click and sort through the link, but these figures usually leave out government transfer payments, which gives us an overall rise in living standards, thanks to the tax payments and lending to the Treasury by the evil rich.
Let us also have a moment of silent reverence for the immigration act of 1965, which allowed new human capital to start its spool up in the 70's and grow to the great trampling we have today. The suppression of wages by this cohort is never mentioned by Reich and friends.