Income Inequality Rose Most Under President Clinton

[kiwiman127]

Charts, charts, charts.
With the first chart we see the growth of income inequality.
With the second chart, we see the income growth of the top percentile versus the household median income. Please note the tremendous growth of income after the Bush tax cuts and the Capital Gains reduction versus the flat trend of median income.
With the third chart we see the percentage of the National Income for working Americans (non-farm wage earners). Notice it's trend and the beginning longterm downwards trend starting in 1980 and the acceleration downwards after 2000.
Why is this happening?

 

[kiwiman127]

Corporate profits have been at record levels as the 1st chart indicates. And the taxes Corporate American have been decliningas part of the US's overall ta revenues as chart 3 shows.
Who benefits the most from corporate profits? Chart 2 shows us who. Yet incomes for the working class have been flat/falling in Real Dollars. What does this indicate? Where is the trickle down?

 

[likeabird03]

Charts, charts, charts.
With the first chart we see the growth of income inequality.
With the second chart, we see the income growth of the top percentile versus the household median income. Please note the tremendous growth of income after the Bush tax cuts and the Capital Gains reduction versus the flat trend of median income.
With the third chart we see the percentage of the National Income for working Americans (non-farm wage earners). Notice it's trend and the beginning longterm downwards trend starting in 1980 and the acceleration downwards after 2000.
Why is this happening?

From the above graph it looks like income for the top earners just gyrates in close relationship to the dow. This highlights less of a structural problem in terms of income inequality than I originally thought.

Interesting.

 

[expat_panama]

Corporate profits have been at record levels as the 1st chart indicates. And the taxes Corporate American have been decliningas ...

Hold on there, if you like the Fed's BEA numbers for profits, then maybe we should use the BEA's BEA numbers for both corp. profits corp taxes. Here they are--

and reality is corp taxes have steady gone up while corp profits took a big hit.

This cr@p about switching from what one guy says about someone else's numbers for profits to someone else's take on taxes --it's either pitifully sloppy job or it's a con game. Marxists use that approach because that's the only way they can use economic data to push their anti-market agenda. People who care more about knowing what's going on than they do about political ideology would never put up with different graphs, different time frames, different data sources, and different sets of definitions.

 

[likeabird03]

...Payrolls started shrinking in January 2008, and by the time the financial crises reached critical mass in Sept 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, payrolls were already falling at terminal velocity... ...12 month inflation rate during this time was actually north of 5%, resulting in wage growth of negative 2%....

You're spot on bringing up inflation.

What you may want to be saying is that record wage growth in 2008 came with the '08 inflation spike and flat wages in '09 came with the deflation hole. The numbers say it better--

--that '08 was a great time to earn money for spending in '09. Something else we got is how good real pay was before '08 compared to after.

Actually it shows real wages fell by a smaller amount in 2009 than they did in 2008. This was also due to the tax cuts in the spring 2009.

I find it funny you should post that graph - it shows that wages have been losing ground to inflation since 2006, which conflicts with many arguments you've tried to make in other threads. The 2008 inflation spike had nothing to do with "record wage growth" as you put it, and everything to do with oil prices at $147 that summer and a US Dollar that bottomed out against other currencies at that time. You're confusing Cost-Push Inflation with Demand-Pull Inflation. The latter is something that we haven't seen for quite some time.

 

[rdean]

But aren't Republicans always insisting they take "credit"?

 

[expat_panama]

...

...it shows real wages fell by a smaller amount in 2009 than they did in 2008...

The lines are on two different scales, makes it confusing. Here are the actual index numbers with percent changes:

___date___ __CPI__ COMP_ prices _pay_ __prices _pay_
2006-01-01 199.300 100.8 100.0% 100.0%
2006-04-01 200.700 101.6 100.7% 100.8%
2006-07-01 202.900 102.5 101.8% 101.7%
2006-10-01 201.900 103.3 101.3% 102.5%
2007-01-01 203.379 103.9 102.0% 103.1%
2007-04-01 206.010 104.8 103.4% 104.0%
2007-07-01 207.655 105.6 104.2% 104.8%
2007-10-01 209.156 106.5 104.9% 105.7%
2008-01-01 212.180 107.2 106.5% 106.3%
2008-04-01 214.118 108.0 107.4% 107.1%
2008-07-01 219.133 108.6 110.0% 107.7% 100.0% 100.0%
2008-10-01 216.930 109.1 108.8% 108.2% 99.0% 100.5%
2009-01-01 211.903 109.3 106.3% 108.4% 96.7% 100.6%
2009-04-01 212.799 109.5 106.8% 108.6% 97.1% 100.8%
2009-07-01 214.782 109.9 107.8% 109.0% 98.0% 101.2%
2009-10-01 216.445 110.4 108.6% 109.5% 98.8% 101.7%
2010-01-01 217.458 111.1 109.1% 110.2% 99.2% 102.3%
2010-04-01 217.625 111.6 109.2% 110.7% 99.3% 102.8%
2010-07-01 217.621 112.1 109.2% 111.2% 99.3% 103.2%
2010-10-01 218.970 112.7 109.9% 111.8% 99.9% 103.8%
2011-01-01 221.062 113.3 110.9% 112.4% 100.9% 104.3%
2011-04-01 224.433 114.2 112.6% 113.3% 102.4% 105.2%
2011-07-01 225.425 114.6 113.1% 113.7% 102.9% 105.5%​

Pay went up more than prices in both time frames.

 

[likeabird03]

The lines are on two different scales, makes it confusing. Here are the actual index numbers with percent changes:

___date___ __CPI__ COMP_ prices _pay_ __prices _pay_
2006-01-01 199.300 100.8 100.0% 100.0%
2006-04-01 200.700 101.6 100.7% 100.8%
2006-07-01 202.900 102.5 101.8% 101.7%
2006-10-01 201.900 103.3 101.3% 102.5%
2007-01-01 203.379 103.9 102.0% 103.1%
2007-04-01 206.010 104.8 103.4% 104.0%
2007-07-01 207.655 105.6 104.2% 104.8%
2007-10-01 209.156 106.5 104.9% 105.7%
2008-01-01 212.180 107.2 106.5% 106.3%
2008-04-01 214.118 108.0 107.4% 107.1%
2008-07-01 219.133 108.6 110.0% 107.7% 100.0% 100.0%
2008-10-01 216.930 109.1 108.8% 108.2% 99.0% 100.5%
2009-01-01 211.903 109.3 106.3% 108.4% 96.7% 100.6%
2009-04-01 212.799 109.5 106.8% 108.6% 97.1% 100.8%
2009-07-01 214.782 109.9 107.8% 109.0% 98.0% 101.2%
2009-10-01 216.445 110.4 108.6% 109.5% 98.8% 101.7%
2010-01-01 217.458 111.1 109.1% 110.2% 99.2% 102.3%
2010-04-01 217.625 111.6 109.2% 110.7% 99.3% 102.8%
2010-07-01 217.621 112.1 109.2% 111.2% 99.3% 103.2%
2010-10-01 218.970 112.7 109.9% 111.8% 99.9% 103.8%
2011-01-01 221.062 113.3 110.9% 112.4% 100.9% 104.3%
2011-04-01 224.433 114.2 112.6% 113.3% 102.4% 105.2%
2011-07-01 225.425 114.6 113.1% 113.7% 102.9% 105.5%​

Pay went up more than prices in both time frames.

That's not what that shows. You're using July 2008 as the base, from that point forward prices started falling, which is something I already eluded to. You've made the argument that wage growth was high towards the beginning of that year before the election apparently sabotages everything. So show me the numbers from prior to July 2008.

I'll make do with what you gave me though. The graph shows that in January 2006 the CPI was 199.3, ending with 219.13 in July 2008, meaning prices increased 9.94% during this time. The graph shows compensation was 100.8 in Jan 2006, and 108.6 - an increase of only 7.73% over the same period. This means real compensation fell about 2.2% over those two and a half years.

 

[likeabird03]

Ex-Pat, I just want to add that my heart is in the same place as yours, and I am by no means on the side of the democrats with this one. I think after all that they are more responsible for the mess we are in than the republicans are (though I think Bush didn't help). But we need to be honest about the numbers here and interpret them correctly so we can properly diagnose what the structural problems are.

 

[sealybobo]

The rest of the article has links with more info, like research showing U.S. Income Inequality Has Been Flat Since 1994

It has risen a lot in the past couple decades. And it's about to get wider

Lets look at Trump's new tax cut bill.

As a result, the Tax Policy Center predicts that in 2027, the average tax cut would amount to $160, or just a 0.2 percent income bump.

This would mean a tiny tax bump for many lower- and middle-class households — the average $50,000 to $75,000 — earning household would have a tax bill that is $30 higher than today. The average household earning more than $1 million would get a cut of more than $23,000.

CHARTS: See How Much Of GOP Tax Cuts Will Go To The Middle Class