99%

Sometimes you read or hear something and it just gets you ire up. You fill with righteous indignation, go to grab the proper data to throw back in retaliation only to find that it isn't there. That is a sobering moment of reflection and paradigm shifting. I had just such a moment this evening after reading Chris Espinosa's article 99%.

What I thought at first was simply cleaver manipulation of data turned out really to be a fair portrayal of the financial situation of the different wealth classes in our country. That isn't to say that his article isn't without space for criticism (Chris, a flat rate tax would be a variable expenses, not a fixed one), but he does paint an accurate picture of the growing wealth divide. 

When I first saw this graph I immediately smelled misrepresentation of data. I looked at it and thought to myself, sure the rich grew in adjusted revenue from half a million to almost 2 million in average pre-tax income, but the other groups are so small comparatively that they could easily have have proportional increases that are just hard to see because of the scale and absolute nature of the numbers. 

In such a situation I did the only reasonable thing, I called Chris out and called him a pinko com...I mean, I went to the actual Congressional Budget Office numbers and did a graph of the proportional growth in income per group by year since 1979. What I found is summarized in the graph below.

The results surprised me. The inflation adjusted income of the top 1% increased 200% from 1979 to 2005. In comparison, the change in income of the lowest 20% increase by only 1.27% in that same time period. Sure the effective individual income tax rate for the bottom 20% dropped from 0.0% to -6.5%, while the top 1% rate stayed pretty close to the same (21.8% to 19.4%), but the results were still suprising to me.

However, beyond the fact that there is a growing wealth gap in the US and that gap is growing at an increasing rate my agreement with Chris ends. The gap is growing, between each group it turns out, but the fact is that not a single is group is worse off then they were 30 years ago. Yes, the income of any group is proportionally less then any of the groups above them, but their own buying power hasn't been diminished in any way. The fact is the second quintile (the second lowest 20%) could buy 10% more in 2005 then they could in 1979, and even the very bottom 20% are slightly better off then they used to be.

Once that point was made I don't know why Chris even bothered to keep writing.

Of course it’s a myth that the CEO who makes 185 times the average worker’s pay earns it by working 185 times as hard

 Well clearly, I'm fairly certain that it's impossible to work 1480 hour days.

—it takes almost no work at all.

Really? You're going to stand by that? I have to ask, "Chris, have you ever managed anything or anybody in your entire life?" The board of directors isn't paying the CEO 185 times the normal worker because they like throwing money at people. They do that because that's the going rate of a good CEO and a good CEO make the company more money and everyone in the company more money. A bad CEO leads the company to failure and bankruptcy.

The increasing wealth of the 1% comes largely from the 99%: the mortgage, credit card, and auto loan interest, the gap between corporate profit growth and wage growth, the arbitrage on the ups and downs of the 401(k) accounts of the majority of Americans is the almost effortless source of wealth for the 1%.

First of course the investments of the 1% make money largely off the 99%. If whatever they were doing with their money was targeted perfectly across society they would still be make 99% of their money for 99% of the population. Secondly, aren't you glad that somebody is giving money to banks so that you can then borrow it to buy a house? Here's a little tidbit FYI, if you don't want rich people "exploiting" you with interest payments don't borrow money from them. You'll hang onto more of your money and those "terrible" people making money off of our insatiable need to buy more then we can afford will make less.

...make companies responsible for their own losses and end Too Big To Fail.

That however, I agree with.