Only the richest get richer in this recovery
New research shows most families got dinged financially from 2009 to 2011, with one notable exception: The top 1%.
The economy is still recovering from the recession, and it's come a long way since 2008, when the housing market was dire and the stock market took a nosedive.
But new economic research indicates that the recovery hasn't benefited the average American family -- unless your family is part of the country's new elite. Only the top 1% saw average real income growth between 2009 to 2011, according to a Berkeley economist. (By the way, to break into to the top 1%, you'll need an annual income of at least $366,623, according to the World Top Incomes Database.)
For the rest of us in the 99% bracket, family incomes slipped by 0.4% from 2009 to 2011, according to Emmanuel Saez, the University of California, Berkeley, economist whose earlier research documented a three-decade run-up in income for America's top 1%.
The recovery is treating the top 1% much better, however. That group saw incomes gain 11.2% during the first two years of the recovery, according to Saez, who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2010 for his research into income and tax policy.
But doesn't a rising tide lift all boats? Saez says it's not happening in this recovery. "In 2012, top 1% income will likely surge, due to booming stock prices, as well as re-timing of income to avoid the higher 2013 top tax rates," he wrote in the January report. "Bottom 99% will likely grow much more modestly than top 1% incomes from 2011 to 2012."
Astoundingly, Saez writes that his new research shows that the top 1% grabbed 121% of the income gains in the first two years of the recovery. How does that work? In essence, it means that the gains of the top 1% came at the expense of the remaining 99%.
The research may give a boost to President Obama's proposals outlined in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. Taking a progressive stance, his address included ideas such as raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour.
That might not be enough to appease Saez, who last year told The New York Times he advocates much higher top marginal tax rates on the rich -- up to as much as 90%.
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When the richest Americans pull their resources and pay for the elected officials campaigns who gets the favors? When 'our' supreme court decided Corporations were people, whose been getting the favors? The American middle class is disappearing because the richest Americans are taking what the middle class earned. The richest Americans, i.e., corporations and heavy investors like Mitt Romney who hide their money in overseas accounts to keep from paying taxes are in fact running the show on capital hill. "Our" representatives are members of this elite group of millionaires or very desperately trying to join them. I work everyday. I'm so called middle class, I earn 80,000 a year but I am a dying breed in America. My son works for less than half what I make when he is lucky enough to find some work. My benefits have gone south for years. I've lost vacation time. Retirement money. I've had to pay more and more for my health coverage out of my pocket and lost coverage. The playing field is tilted to the rich. The banks are borrowing the peoples money for 0 percent interest from the federal reserve. They loan the same money at 2 to over 20 percent interest then pay themselves bonuses for making a profit. America and its people need to stop the bleeding. America and its great middle class need to rise up and take back our country.
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When I went to school they didn`t teach anything in high school or college about the stock
market.I`ve made a to the last 15 years.Jobs will come and go, but the market is great
if you know the ropes.You don`t get rich working for someone else.At least not for a while.
The market is like winning at the horse races, if you`re smart.
We should not be blaming corporations since companies are made up of many workers but a few overpaid execs that gets all the dough, even if they're wrong. Those execs are the ones getting all the benefits and golden parachutes. It is those execs that drive the companies and commanding the workers.
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