Census Bureau: 2009 US Income Gap Highest Ever Recorded

[Reuters] The top 20 percent of the population, those making more than $100,000 a year, took in nearly 50 percent of all income generated in the US in 2009, while the 44 million people living below the poverty line received only 3.4 percent. “That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968” (AP).

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.

To make the top 1 percent of wealthiest Americans in 2005, a taxpayer had to earn at least $364,657.

[Wall Street Journal] 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. The IRS data go back only to 1986, but academic research suggests the rich last had this high a share of total income in the 1920s - the era of the Robber Barons.

[World Socialist Web Site] Some of the figures, for particular states and regions, are simply staggering. Michigan residents experienced a 6.2 percent decrease in median income in the course of one year, from 2008 to 2009, while Illinois has suffered a 24 percent increase in poverty in the past decade. More than 36 percent of Detroit’s population officially lives in poverty.

• Overall, the 2009 American Community Survey reveals that median household income fell in the US nearly 3 percent between 2008 and 2009, from $51,726 to $50,221. This was the second consecutive year in which household incomes dropped. Median income declined in 34 states, and increased only in sparsely populated North Dakota.
• “Thirty-one states saw increases in both the number and percentage of people in poverty between 2008 and 2009,” reported the Census Bureau in a press release. “No state had a statistically significant decline in either the number in poverty or the poverty rate.”
• National median income is down 4 percent from its peak when the recession officially began in December 2007. Last year alone, noted the Washington Post, accounted for $1,500 of that average loss.

[Global Research] In the face of widespread—and growing—economic suffering, the American political establishment remains cold and indifferent, concerned only with defending the wealth and privileges of a tiny minority. As of late Tuesday afternoon, neither the White House nor any leading Democratic Party website carried a response to the Census Bureau figures, which register a portion of the impact of the greatest economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1241503820071012

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119215822413557069.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34235-2004Sep19.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7003694.ece

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/cens-s29.shtml

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21235