The wealthiest 15,000 households, those making more than $11.5 million a year, got a record 6.04 percent of the nation’s $8.7 trillion in income, according to the study by University of California-Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez. The previous year those households amassed 5.46 percent of the total, the tax data shows.
In Saez’s study, the richest Americans represent the top 0.01 percent of all households. In 1928, the year before the Great Depression began, the share of the nation’s income for this slice of households was 5.04 percent.
Hey, the poor are getting richer, too.
Tax Notes said the richest 0.01 percent of Americans has had greater income growth than the rest of the country since the early 1970s. From 1973 to 2007, the average income for taxpayers in that category grew 758 percent, or more than $30 million. Excluding the wealthiest 10 percent, the rest of the population got an average increase of $286 over that period, or about $8.41 annually, adjusted for inflation, Tax Notes said.
It’s enough for a pack of smokes and a coke. And you get it every year! What are you complaining about?