Did You Know: Income Growth

The economist Emmanuel Saez recently crunched the numbers and found that, between 1993 and 2006, roughly half of overall income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of all families. During the expansion overseen by George W. Bush, “the top 1 percent captured almost three-quarters of income growth.” This was great for ordinary Americans, Republicans told us at the time. Except that it wasn’t. According to Saez, real income for Americans in the bottom 99 percent increased by just 1.1 percent per year between 1993 and 2006. During the Bush expansion, it fell below 1 percent per year.

[From The Nation]