Sunday, November 07, 2010
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times
The United Banana Republic
You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.
The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.
C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001.
Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.
That was the backdrop for one of the first big postelection fights in Washington.
Read Full The New York Times Article
Posted by Editor on 11/07/10 at 09:45 PM •
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