Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Top .01%, Top 1%, Bottom 99%

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Top .01%, Top 1%, Bottom 99%

Article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review Blog. (This is the complete article.)

For the arithmetically challenged, that’s a total of 93 percent of the growth in income in 2010 that went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.
What these numbers indicate is that the wages and salaries of the bottom 99 percent barely changed but the surplus those same workers created during 2010 (a) increased, (b) was mostly captured by the top 1 percent, and (c) was sheltered from taxes.
In other words, the tiny minority at the top made out like bandits in 2010.