and the poor get fucked.
The above is a graph representing compensation from 1990 to 2005. The blue line represents CEO's pay, the red line represents the rest of us.
That is hourly earnings adjusted for inflation. Yeah, they've gone down since 1972. Except for CEOs.
While tax rates remained stable for the rest of us, they took quite a dive for the very richest.
It's not so much that I'm not rich and will never be, it's that, as the last graph shows, I'm paying for other people to be rich, which is just a tad annoying.
You know when my down-the-ticket-Republican husband agrees that taxes just aren't moral right now, that something's really skewed.
ReplyDeletewashingtontimes.com: "Real personal income for Americans - excluding government payouts such as Social Security - has fallen by 3.2 percent since President Obama took office in January 2009, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
ReplyDeleteFor comparison, real personal income during the first 15 months in office for President George W. Bush, who inherited a milder recession from his predecessor, dropped 0.4 percent. Income excluding government payouts increased 12.7 percent during Mr. Bush's eight years in office.
"This is hardly surprising," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, an economist and former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. "Under President Obama, only federal spending is going up; jobs, business startups, and incomes are all down. It is proof that the government can't spend its way to prosperity."
PS. When the rich become less rich, there is less money for investment capital, startup, innovation and productivity. When you increase a nation's productivity, everybody's standard of living increases. The rich are responsible for promoting productivity. So less rich means FEWER JOBS--why don't you think companies are hiring right now? When was the last time you saw someone in poverty create jobs?
I've got an idea: To close this "annoying" wage gap, let's take money from the rich and give it to the poor like a true Marxist, and see what happens to the economy. (We'll call it capping lavish CEO salary or taxing the evil rich for their fair share to make it sound good).
PSS. Your graph is referring to the top 1% of earners. Taxes have increased for the top 5%, who end up paying over 50% of taxes collected in this country--and you're complaining about this?