US income gap widest since 1917

[Hannah Bell]

The social chasm separating America’s financial oligarchy from working people, the vast majority of the population, is wider than at any time since 1917, according to the latest statistics from the Internal Revenue Service...

Bringing this income stratification into still sharper focus provides a staggering indication of the concentration of wealth in the US. The top .01 percent of the population, (less than 15,000 families) saw its share of total income rise from 5.46 percent in 2006 to 6.04 percent in 2007 (compared to just 0.9 percent in 1979). This 2007 figure amounts to roughly double the total combined income for the bottom 20 percent, some 30 million families.

As Saez comments, “2007 was an incredibly good year for the super rich.”

It was also, of course, the year preceding the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This was no mere coincidence. The accumulation of obscene amounts of wealth by this tiny minority is a major factor in the bankrupting of the country and the plunging of the entire world into economic crisis and misery.

...wealth accumulation continues unabated. Seven of America’s top ten CEOs took home total compensation of $100 million or more last year, according to a report by the independent research group The Corporate Library. This compares to just three who pocketed that much the year before.

Topping the list (which includes the heads of seven major oil companies) is Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Group LP, the private equity firm, who took in $702.4 million—nearly $2 million a day.

The return of income polarization to the level of 1917 has profound significance. That was the year of the October Revolution in Russia, marking the first time that working people took political power and initiated the task of placing society on socialist foundations on a worldwide basis. The social gap that now dominates US society, and indeed the entire planet, cannot continue without producing an explosive resurgence of class struggle and a new period of social revolution.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/aug2009/pers-a19.shtml

[Selatius]

1. As shown in history, large income gaps should be closed.

Otherwise, political instability becomes a greater and greater possibility as poor people grow ever more resentful of their bosses and masters.

A good start to reverse this trend is to tax capital gains at the same rate as payroll income. If you were working on your fifth million, you frankly shouldn't be bitching that you only got to take home $650,000, which alone is still more than the bottom 95% could ever hope to make in a year or several.

Do you want this in America?



At some point, the snapping point will be reached.

[blindpig]

5. "Do you want this in America?'

Why, yes I do. Not because I advocate violence but because those bastards won't quit and there's probably no other way to dislodge them.

[TexasObserver]

2. Recommend

[Mixopterus]

3. K&R

[Hannah Bell]

4. kick