The Rich Getting Richer
Posted on | October 12, 2007
This isn’t news, of course, but now even the IRS has noticed:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The gap between America’s richest and poorest is at its widest in at least 25 years, with the wealthiest taking home a record share of the nation’s income that exceeds even the previous high in 2000.
According to recent data from the Internal Revenue Service, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all U.S. income earned in 2005. That is a significant increase from 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of the nation’s income.
The previous high over the past 25 years, when such data were compiled, was in 2000 when a bull market brought the figure up to 20.81 percent.
The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, said the wealthy benefited in 2005 from a healthy, growing economy and higher-than-average price inflation.
It’s obvious who did not benefit, which calls into question the peculiarly narrow definition of “healthy.”
