According to research from the University of California at Berkeley,the top 1 percent of households by income captured 121 percent ofall income gains between 2009 and 2011.
You're asking, how was the top 1 percent able to capture 21 percent morethan all of the income gains? Because during that time span, they became11.2 percent richer --- while at the same time, the bottom 99 percent got 0.4percent poorer (when accounting for inflation) accordingto the study by Emmanuel Saez.
Saez released the updated figures January 23, 2013 after discovering that thetop 1 percent had captured 93 percent of all income gains in 2010, the firstfull year of the supposed "economic recovery".
Overall, between 1993 and 2011 (during 18 years), the top 1 percent's incomesover doubled, at 57.5 percent, while the incomes of the bottom 99 percent grewjust a puny 5.8 percent in almost two decades.
A better argument couldn't be made to give American workers a raise.
Obama wants to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour and peg it toinflation. John Boehner says, "When you raise the price of employment,guess what happens? You get less of it." (Although 20 years of studiesby various economists have never made that correlation.)
What probably concerns House Republicans, as well as the business lobby, mostabout Obama's proposal is not just the nominal minimum wage hike. It'sthe inclusion of a cost-of-living adjustment, which would tweak the minimum wageeach year to adjust for inflation. This would guarantee that workers on thelowest rung of the economic ladder don't lose purchasing power. It would alsomean fast-food companies like McDonalds and other low-wage employers likeWalmart would have to pay higher wages every year if there's higherinflation.
And with a raise, these American workers would also be paying more in federal,Social Security and Medicare taxes too. That's why off-shoring jobs to placeslike China (to pay people in China) only enriches the Chinese economy andChina's national treasury at the expense of ours. ReadMore...
According to a report by Economic Policy Institute, households in thewealthiest onepercent were 288 times richer than the median American household in 2010.
The wealthiest one percent own more than 35 percent of all wealth in the U.S,and income inequality is growing as wages have not kept up with workers'increased output. The EPI blameseconomic policies such as the deregulation of the financial industry, lowertax rates and weakened protections for collective bargaining.
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