Nicholas Kristof often travels to banana republics as part of his New York Times reporting. In his column this past Sunday he pointed out what to some might be a troublesome characteristic the US now shares with those plutocracies.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
The crème de la ubber class and how's everyone else? In the past three years US households lost 17percent of their wealth which according to the Federal Reserve is more than $10 trillion. Nearly one in ten Americans are unemployed and one in six now receive food stamps, jobless benefits or some form of government assistance
But enough of that, can’t we do more for those who have it all?
Washington
— how far to extend the Bush tax cuts to the most affluent 2 percent of Americans. Both parties agree on extending tax cuts on the first $250,000 of incomes, even for billionaires. Republicans would also cut taxes above that.
The richest 0.1 percent of taxpayers would get a tax cut of $61,000 from President Obama. They would get $370,000 from Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. And that provides only a modest economic stimulus, because the rich are less likely to spend their tax savings.
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