via The Smirking Chimp:
". . .Since the election of Ronald Reagan the wealth of the nation has more than doubled. Per capita, Americans are now 70 percent richer than they were in 1979. Where have these several trillion dollars of new affluence gone?
For poor people, the answer is clear: Essentially none of this wealth has come their way. Adjusted for inflation, the tenth percentile of after-tax family income is almost exactly the same today as it was in 1979 - about $13,500 (note this means that 30 million Americans live on even less). For the middle class, the situation is only slightly different. In 1979, the average middle-class family had an after-tax income of $38,000; today that figure is about $43,700, meaning that over the past quarter-century the average American family has seen its income rise by about $200 per year.
For our wealthiest citizens, by contrast, 25 years of Republican rule have made these very much the best of times. During this period, the average after-tax income of the top 1 percent of Americans has risen an astonishing 111.3 percent, from $298,900 to $631,700 per year (again, all these figures are adjusted for inflation). . ."
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