The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is out with a report showing the growing disparity between the richest 1% of the US population and the rest of us.
The Center used data from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research organiazation that advises Congress on budget matters.
The gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007 (the period for which these data are available), according to data the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued last week. Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top of the income scale than at any time since 1928.
The gap in income between the wealthiest Americans and all others has grown strikingly in recent decades, the CBO data show.
In 1979, when the data begin, the average after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of households were 7.9 times higher than those of the middle fifth of households. By 2007, top incomes were 23.9 times higher than those of the middle fifth — a more than tripling of the income gap.
Additionally, the tax cuts implemented under the George W. Bush administration exacerbated the income inequality even further.
Legislation enacted under the Bush Administration provided taxpayers with about $1.7 trillion in tax cuts through 2008. Because high-income households received by far the largest tax cuts — not only in dollar terms but also as a percentage of income — the tax cuts have increased the concentration of after-tax income at the top of the spectrum.
Currently, the debate involved whether to renew the Bush tax cuts that benefit those making over $250,000 a year.
Source: Income Gaps Between Very Rich and Everyone Else More Than Tripled In Last Three Decades, New Data Show , Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 25 June 2010.
Report (Acrobat): Income Gaps Between Very Rich and Everyone Else More Than Tripled In Last Three Decades, New Data Show
