How the 1% got richer, while the 99% got poorer

How the 1% got richer, while the 99% got poorer

The just-released Congressional Budget Office report, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007, supports a basic claim of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement sweeping the country: that deep economic inequality is corrupting politics, culture and American society as a whole.

CBO reports are almost universally considered and relied upon as epitomes of non-partisan research. Simply put, the CBO report shows that over the last quarter century (1979 to 2007, to be exact), the top 1% of income earners enjoyed far, far bigger real income gains than the other 99%. As a result, the share of total income earned by the top 1% rose dramatically – doubling from 10% to 20% – at the expense of falling shares of income for all of the other 99% of the US population.

No wonder the OWS movement showed genius in crafting and adopting the slogan "We are the 99%." No wonder polls already show a majority of Americans expressing sympathy with the OWS movement barely five weeks after it was born – a stunning achievement relative to comparable mass movements in US history. Read more....