While it's true that Al Gore won the Nobel Prize today, his dominance of both the Swedes and Sundance is not the most impressive record being set. Not even near it. So don't be humble, don't be shy -- c'mon rich people, come out and take a bow:
The richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market, and underlining the divergence of economic fortunes blamed for fueling anxiety among American workers.
The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.
The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000.
To think of this a bit more concretely, if you took a representative 100 Americans and split $5 of income between them, here's how it would look: One guy would get $1.06, forcing the other 99 to split the remaining $3.94, while the bottom 50 would split 64 cents among themselves. The leftover $3.30 would be divvied up among the remaining 49 folks.
That's a remarkable level of inequality. If income really was apportioned in such a public way, the guy taking that $1.06 would get lynched. But, in fact, it turns out that he's doing nothing wrong. He's just got a whole lot more education and skills than everyone else in society. Asked about this data, George W. Bush said, "First of all, our society has had income inequality for a long time. Secondly, skills gaps yield income gaps. And what needs to be done about the inequality of income is to make sure people have got good education, starting with young kids."
It would be nice if the President knew what he was talking about. But he isn't even close.
