Hyper-Rich Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0605-01.htm

Published on Sunday, June 5, 2005 by the New York Times

Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind

by David Cay Johnston
<snip>

Call them the hyper-rich.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent.

They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners - the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more.

The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in 1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.

The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell.


..more..
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LBN thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1523579&mesg_id=1523579

[Bob3]

1. Can you say Third World Country controlled by an Oligarchy?

Great. I knew you could.

[oscar111]

2. "EARNED" ?... no, "GOT" is accurate

lakoff... reframe the debate

just be more honest in this case.

"earned three gazillion by counting up all the dividends from stock inhereited from pa" this year "between posing for photographers for the Society Page at daily parties with large ice sculptures of Michaelangelo's David, .. spouting vodka from a male opening" {as in real-life the case of Kozlowski's two million dollar birthday party. Yes, two million , no humor there.}

no, EARNED is not the word. Say GOT three gazillion in dividends.

Galbraith: "the hardest workers get the least here. Migrant farmworkers work the hardest. I get paid a lot more, and i enjoy my job ... it is not work... i would pay to do it".Paraphrased from memory.

Galbraith, now retired, was then a harvard prof. Economics, i think.
He still advises a site in my sig, see right below. J K Galbraith was a luminary in JFK's time, IIRC.

Huey Long.. " can you really say someone

produced a million dollars in a year?
Can anyone really

spend and enjoy a million a year in a meaningful way? "

No to both. {quote is composite paraphrase from several speeches of Huey}

Spending at that rate , it soon becomes just unappreciated frills... like the walpaper recently, hundreds of IDENTICAL fleur-de-lis... "all handpainted on the walls, each taking about five minutes". One of those "houses of the rich and famous " shows.

Waste, just waste. Huey was right.

Mason U. has a tape recording online from Huey and the Senate archives. It describes '34, and could be our nation today as well.

[oscar111]

3. Huey Long- "If one fella gets a million, what's left for the rest of us?"

exact quote

Now to jump to the present day ---

We live in a "gobble/starve economy"

12 million americans are hungry.

3 million are homeless over the course of a year. {one mill on any one night. some rise out of it, some fall in, so it is a churning situation, and in a year 3 million are involved wth living on a piece of sidewalk}.

gobble/starve is right. What country would want to copy that? Norway is the REAL "envy of the world", condolezza rice. Our lifespan is only 25th.

a few yrs back, it was 2Oth.
Saw this last month ---

" GOP rule assures more and more nations will outlive us."