{"id":57185,"date":"2013-09-15T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T17:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/?p=1818"},"modified":"2013-09-15T15:56:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T20:56:58","slug":"welcome-to-an-economy-for-the-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/09\/15\/welcome-to-an-economy-for-the-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to an Economy for the 1%"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The great majority of Americans might find the post-recession expansion disappointing, but not the top earners.<\/p>\n<p>The following table <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/09\/11\/how-the-1percent-won-the-recovery-in-one-table\/\">reveals<\/a> that our economic system is operating much differently than in the recent past. \u00a0The rightmost column shows that the top 1% captured 68% of all the new income generated over the period 1993 to 2012, but a full 95% of all the real income growth during the 2009-2012 recovery from the Great Recession. \u00a0In contrast, the top 1% only captured 45% of the income growth during the Clinton expansion and 68% during the Bush expansion.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"font-size: 13px;\" alt=\"piketty_saez\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/files\/2013\/09\/piketty_saez-e1378850869532.png\" width=\"545\" height=\"430\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Of that weren&#8217;t enough, the next chart <a href=\"http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/10\/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery\/?emc=eta1&amp;_r=0\">offers<\/a>\u00a0another perspective on how well top income earners are doing. In the words of the <em>New York Times<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/economix.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/10\/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery\/?emc=eta1&amp;_r=0\">article<\/a> that included it:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8230;the top 10% of earners took more than half of the country\u2019s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago&#8230; The top 1% took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans, one of the highest levels on record since 1913 when the government instituted an income tax.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/graphics8.nytimes.com\/images\/2013\/09\/10\/business\/economy\/10economix-sub-wealth\/10economix-sub-wealth-blog480.jpg\" width=\"468\" height=\"370\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We have a big economy. \u00a0Slow growth isn\u2019t such a big deal if you are in the top 1% and 22.5% of the total national income is yours and you can capture 95% of any increase.\u00a0 As for the rest of us&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>One question rarely raised by those reporting on income trends: What policies are responsible for these trends?<\/p>\n<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.lclark.edu\/hart-landsberg\/2013\/09\/12\/an-economy-for-the-1\/\" target=\"_blank\">Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\">Martin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of economics at <a href=\"http:\/\/college.lclark.edu\/faculty\/members\/martin_hart-landsberg\/\">Lewis and Clark College<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"https:\/\/economicfront.wordpress.com\/\">Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following table reveals much about the way our economic system operates.&nbsp; It shows that the top 1% captured 68% of all the new income generated over the period 1993 to 2012. Now that is a long time period, one that includes several recessions and expansions. Looking just at our current expansion, from 2009 to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":57205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,12498,253,3920,85,304],"class_list":["post-57185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-history","tag-nation-united-states","tag-politics","tag-the-state"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/09\/Screenshot_117.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57185"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57206,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57185\/revisions\/57206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}