Top 1 Percent of Americans Reaped Two-Thirds of Income Gains in Last Economic Expansion

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports: "Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez." Why am I writing about this? Because the long-term implications for the digital divide in this country, and thus American competitiveness, are appalling.

"The incomes of the top one-tenth of 1 percent (0.1 percent) of U.S. households have grown more rapidly than the incomes of the top 1 percent of households as a whole, rising by 94 percent — or $3.5 million per household — since 2002." This surpasses 1928 data.

If people want to scream and cry at Town Halls, or about the President addressing schoolchildren, it seems to me that they should be screaming and crying about THIS. Who is addressing this grotesque inequity?

Even if those at the top of the economic food chain don't have the ethics to see this inequity as wrongheaded, they should at least have the pragmatism to understand they will lose the consumer class that fueled their success. Once people are too busy surviving, they won't be spending. Look around you and ask yourself if this is the state in which we should be living.