George Bush recently made statements saying how despite some storm clouds, the economy was good, or at least its underpinnings. What he failed to mention is whose economy he was talking about. If you thought he was talking about America as a whole, you thought wrong. Things couldn't be worse for America's lower class and shrinking middle class. What he was referring to was the upper class, or as he knows them, his base.
From The New York Times:
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.
The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.
See, things are going superbly....for Bush's most loyal fans. If only Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding were alive to see this, they'd be so proud of lil' Bush. Of course the pResident correctly claims that the income gap has been widening over the last 25 years (or since Reagan was in office) but the increase has never been so dramatic as it has been under this Administration.
|