In March, the Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez shocked a lot of people by calculating that during the first year of the recovery from the 2007-2009 recession, incomes for the top one percent grew by 11.6 percent while incomes for the bottom 99 percent grew a mere 0.2 percent. (All figures here are in â??real dollars,â? i.e., they discount for inflation.) Granted, the one percent had taken it on the chin during the recession; from 2007 to 2009, incomes had fallen twice as fast for the one percent (36.3 percent) as for the average family (17.4 percent). The rich always lose big in recessions, because so much of their income comes from capital gains. (Indeed, the one percent took an even bigger share of the nation's income losses between 2000 and 2002, which included the â??tech bubbleâ? recession of 2001.) But Saezâ??s calculations showed that the one percent had come roaring back. In 2010, fully 93 percent of the recovery ended up in the pockets of the one percent. One year later, the bottom 99 percent were marching in the streets.
When I wrote about Saezâ??s findings in March, I said things had likely gotten better for the 99 percent in 2011, because unemployment was inching downward. And maybe they did. But they sure didn't get better for the average American household.
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