Thank god, I said--finally, a great juxtaposition of an argument I've made for lo these many years (and, not to great success, admittedly) that the Gross Domestic Product tells us very little about the general welfare of most people.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis just dropped an e-mail to report that:
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006,according to final estimates.
That number is revised up slightly than previously estimated. Overall, GDP growth last year was 3.3 percent--a number the president and many Republicans are using to run around the country claiming that the economy is doing just fine and so why are people whining?
And in to that debate falls David Cay Johnston's piece today in The New York Times entitled "Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows." Johnston has long been one of the best reporters in the MSM keeping tracking of the on-going class warfare in the country. Here are the killer first grafs:
Income inequality grew significantly in 2005, with the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928, analysis of newly released tax data shows.
The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression.
While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005, the most recent year for which such data is available, average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent.
The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent.
The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980.
So, the bottom line is this: the economy may be growing--that is, alot of stuff is being made and sold--but the GDP growth is telling us very little about what that means for the average person. Income distribution is a much better barometer--and the facts there are quite astounding. It's pretty clear why workers are feeling anxious about the future. They are strapped, while the top one percent are not.
Which brings me to another point I've made: with these figures making clear that the top one percent of income earners are continuing to reap an unconscionable slice of the nation's income, why is the Democratic Party not making the rolling back of the Bush tax cuts a top priority? Yes, Bush will veto any such attempt. But, the public will be with us.
isnt a class war, it's a class massacre.
Posted by: mo | March 31, 2007 at 01:35 PM