from "pha-exchange" <[log in to unmask]>
> Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows
> By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
>(excerpts)
> Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of
> Americans - those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 -
receiving
> their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly
> released tax data shows.
>
> The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also
reached
> a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
>
> 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.
>
> Last year, according to data from other sources, incomes for average
> Americans increased for the first time in several years. But because
those
> at the top rely heavily on the stock market and business profits for
their
> income, both of which were strong last year, it is likely that the
> disparities in 2005 are the same or larger now.
>
> The disparities may be even greater for another reason. The Internal
> Revenue Service estimates that it is able to accurately tax 99 percent of
> wage income but that it captures only about 70 percent of business and
> investment income, most of which flows to upper-income individuals,
> because not everybody accurately reports such figures.
>
In addition to rising incomes and reduced taxes, the equation
> should take into account cuts in fringe benefits to workers and in
> government services that middle-class and poor Americans rely on more
than
> the affluent. These include health care, child care and education
> spending.
>
This all raises serious questions about continuing to provide tax cuts
> averaging over $150,000 a year to people making more than a million
> dollars a year, while saying we do not have enough money" to provide
> health insurance to 47 million Americans and cutting education benefits.
>
> The analysis showed that the top 10 percent of Americans collected 48.5
> percent of all reported income in 2005.
>
> That is an increase of more than 2 percentage points over the previous
> year and up from roughly 33 percent in the late 1970s. The peak for this
> group was 49.3 percent in 1928.
>
> The top 1 percent received 21.8 percent of all reported income in 2005,
up
> significantly from 19.8 percent the year before and more than double
their
> share of income in 1980. The peak was in 1928, when the top 1 percent
> reported 23.9 percent of all income.
>
The New York Times Company
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