Average pre-tax incomes in 2006 jumped by about $60,000 (5.8 percent) for the top 1 percent of households, but just $430 (1.4 percent) for the bottom 90 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to a new update in the groundbreaking series on income inequality by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Their analysis of newly released IRS data shows that in 2006, the shares of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent of households were higher than in any year since 1928.
Average Income in 2006 up $60,000 for Top 1 Percent of Households, Just $430 for Bottom 90 Percent. Chye-Ching Huang and Chad Stone, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
I was watching Fox News on Saturday, after Senator Obama’s vice-presidential announcement, and William Crystal, that weird rolly-polly gnome of the right, called Senator Biden the perfect candidate to start the class war. They mean, of course, that Biden is pro-union and pro-women, generally speaking, and can start hammering away at McCain’s “welfare for the rich” economic programs.
It’s classic right-wing rhetorical Judo, as Huang and Stone’s work shows. You take the truth– that there’s been a radical shift of wealth from the poor, working, and middle-classes to the rich– and you insist on the opposite. If you repeat it often enough, it starts to sound like the truth. The farther you get from the actual truth, you more you need to exaggerate. Thus, “The Audacity of Socialism.”
