Editorial: Not feeling the recovery? Here's why

Editorial: Not feeling the recovery? Here's why

click link for full article

snip



Matson: April 1, 2012

R.J. Matson/Post-Dispatch, April 1, 2012

If you've read about the economic recovery but you're just not feeling it, this could explain why:

In 2010, the first full year of the recovery, 93 percent of all the $288 billion in new income created nationwide went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. Figures for 2011 won't be available until next year.

Ninety. Three. Percent. To the 1 percent of taxpayers who make $352,000 and up. Way up in some cases.

Thirty-seven percent — $106.5 billion — of the $288 billion in additional income created in 2010 accrued to the richest 0.01 percent of taxpayers, the top one-hundredth of 1 percent of American households, the 15,600 individuals or households with average incomes of $23.8 million.

Say your household is right in the middle. Half of American households earn more, half earn less. Between June 2009 and June 2011, the median household income fell 6.7 percent in inflation-related terms, to $49,909.

These data were derived from a study of American tax returns by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, updating work he did previously with Thomas Picketty of the Paris School of Economics.

Reuters tax columnist David Cay Johnston has added some historical perspective. Between 1933 and 1934, as President Franklin Roosvelt's administration began responding to the Great Depression, the average income for the bottom 90 percent of wage earners increased by 8.8 percent. The average income for the super-rich, the top 0.01 percent, actually fell 3.4 percent.

But since the Reagan Revolution, under Democratic presidents and Congresses as well as Republican, government tax and financial policies have been geared to the wealthy. Mr. Saez's figures show that the top 1 percent reaped 45 percent of the economic growth in the Clinton era and 65 percent during the George W. Bush presidency. The first two years of the Obama administration, when Democrats also controlled both houses of Congress, only accelerated the trend.

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/editorial-not-feeling-the-recovery-here-s-why/article_9bbb750f-887c-5b1e-96c0-ea7ae33acb55.html#ixzz1qnt7h9Sa