Day: February 26, 2010

A snapshot of income disparity, By Tim Rutten, February 24, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “On the eve of our worst financial crisis since the Depression, the United States was — from an economic standpoint, at least — a less equal nation than at any time since the Gilded Age. The sputtering recovery now underway is producing few, if any, jobs to replace those that have been lost. Meanwhile, a variety of factors continues to push wages and most salaries lower. Thus, we’re likely to emerge from this downturn with even greater disparities in income, wealth and effective tax rates, and the forces pushing us in that direction are particularly strong in Los Angeles County. We have a pre-recession portrait of American inequality because, in 1992, the Clinton administration asked the Internal Revenue Service to begin tracking the incomes and tax payments of the country’s 400 richest households. During the George W. Bush years, the IRS continued to collect the data, but — you’ll be shocked to know — didn’t release it to the public. Last week, the figures for 2007 were quietly made available, and, as David Cay Johnston, who formerly covered tax policy for the New York Times and now teaches at Syracuse University’s law school, points out, ‘The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low…'”