As the rich get richer, the poor inevitably get poorer. The old saying is as true today as it was when it was first uttered, whenever that was. The truth of the matter is that the discrepancy in incomes between the top percentiles and the rest of us is growing at an alarming rate. The top one percent have their highest share of the national income since the year before the Great Depression came crashing in during the late 1920s.
More from The New York Times:
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
The news is grim for most Americans but the rich should not be too excited, despite their increasing purchasing power. The current economic circumstances cannot support a growing national economy for an indefinite amount of time. Much like the roaring 20s, things can come tumbling down in the 2010s just like they did in the 1930s. Unfortunately our leaders have not learned any lessons from the greed that predominated the upper class eighty years ago. As the cliche goes, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
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