Sticky Fingers: The Super Rich Set a New Greed Grab Record

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



A New Profile of America's 'Top-Heaviest' Year
In 2007, the year before the Great Recession began, America's super rich partied — as never before. The evidence? We look at the year's freshly crunched income numbers.

August 17, 2009
By Sam Pizzigati


Emmanuel Saez, the Berkeley economist who many now consider the world’s top authority on the incomes of the super rich, has never been one for sweeping statements. He tends to let his data do the talking. But his latest data — from the crunching of just-released IRS tax records for 2007 — have wowed even Saez.

America’s most affluent, those data show, have never grabbed a greater share of the nation’s income than they did in 2007. The nation’s top .01 percent of income-earners in 2007 — taxpayers who made over $11.5 million — pulled in 6.04 percent of all income, the highest top .01 percent share of the nation’s income since the IRS started keeping records back in 1913.

The year 2007, a rather awestruck Saez noted earlier this month, “was an incredibly good year for the super rich.”

The 14,588 families who made up 2007’s top .01 percent averaged $35,042,705 in income, 1,080 times the $32,421 average income of America’s bottom 90 percent. The gap between the top .01 percent and the bottom 90 percent, before 2007, had never stretched over 1,000 times.

Was 2007 the most unequal, top-heavy year in American history? That depends on how you define the top. If you’re looking at only the tippy-top of the income distribution — families in the richest tenth or hundredth of 1 percent — 2007 “wins” the inequality honors hands down.

But if you define rich a bit more broadly, as the top 1 percent, the rich of 2007 don’t quite match the sticky fingers of their awesomely affluent counterparts back in the late 1920s. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/aug17a.html

high old time...

Ever since Reagan we've been in this fight and losing badly. Now it seems that we are starting to at least hold our own.