That is partly the case as "cumulative" is not the fact -- which is why I puzzled over it.

The part that remains the case is that the rich get richer during good times, and the graph starts in the bad times and ends in the good times. We patiently wait for a graph update, as the next few years will show a hefty decrease for the 1%.

(Also, these numbers are for households instead of per-capita, which is misleading, as the household income may be a household of one, or an extended family.)

The numbers seem to have not been developed, except for the IRS figures for the top 5%. And here's where figures lie and liars figure: going from upturn to downturn, the numbers for the top 5% are about the same in 2000 as they are in 2009.

There's another aspect to this: wealth is not like a big pie, where if the people at the top eat a bigger piece, that means people like you and me are left with a smaller piece.

The graph shows us how this is not the case. Where the top 1% lines are moving up, all the other lines are moving up too! WTF?

That means if you want to improve your own muddy situation, you should root for the 1%. If the 1% do well, in no time at all, it'll feel like it's 2007 again.

Sometimes true, sometimes not. There's the rub.

Some rich folks did get rich by making the pie bigger, and getting a nice big slice for themselves, which is fine so long as those with small slices don't actually go backwards, and it is good if those with small slices find their slices growing, however slightly. (In philosophy-speak: an inequality is acceptable if those who are worst off under the inequality would be even worse of if the inequality were to be removed.)

However, quite a few rich folks get rich not by enlarging the pie, but by getting a bigger % of the pie for themselves. In fact, some even make the pie smaller in doing so (remember the plot of Wall Street, even though it is fiction?) This is what pisses people off.

I've seen the difference first hand. I used to work for a multinational pizza chain.
They introduced a new super-big pizza, spent money on new equipment and advertising. Sales went up, the company made a little more money, and the staff got maybe a few more hours per week. The pie had got bigger. Good capitalism.

Later, they pushed all the drivers from hourly rates to contract per delivery. We did the same work for less money. The pie was no bigger, but the slices were cut differently. We, the workers, got screwed. Bad capitalism.

It happens both ways, and to pretend it doesn't is simply incorrect, whichever side you support.

Different kind of wealth sir; the wealth of a nation is measured in how it maximizes its workforce's output, and additional wealth is generated through innovation (tw is right all along about this), in which it creates more or new things while consuming fewer materials.

Whereas in 1979, listening to new music required me to drive to a merchant, purchase a layer of vinyl made out of oil, produced by large pressing plants and distributed by truck, right now a friend suggested a new band and listening to them required me to make a search and two clicks.

Whereas in 1979, the lung cancer survival* rate was ~15%, by 2007 it's ~30%. This is another measure of wealth.

Generating new wealth in the pizza game would be found in getting food to the people using less raw materials. Shifting the price around between dough and labor doesn't improve a nation's wealth. But if one created a 20% more efficient oven with the same cost, that would create wealth out of nothing.




*Cancer survival rate is a complicated thing to measure and so any single number given for it is probably an simplification, but you get my drift.

Well that still is no reason for my tax payer dollars to go to a single penny of paying off some fools debt.

And yet, that is precisely what your tax dollars did with TARP. Pay off some fool's debt...some "too big to fail" fools.

Bailout Status

I can't agree more. They should have allowed them to go bankrupt.

I respect these people 1 million times more... I know these people.

Life is rarely that simple. Life is rarely black and white.

Everything is just fine until something unimaginable happens - like a catastrophic illness or the breadwinner loses the job (after doing everything "right" like in the above posters sign)


Life isn't like following a recipe: Do A and B and C will happen. I mean, you can try - you should try - to do the right thing but life has a way of making its own way. You can't blame people when cosmic shit happens to them.


eta - I am wondering. Do you think everyone should follow your example and live like you do? should everyone take direction from you? can you, will you explain the meaning of life to everyone? You certainly make out like you have all the answers and if people would just do as you say, it would all work out for them. If they don't do as you say, or do as you did, they are
god damn fools, right?

However you measure it, I think my point still holds. Some people get rich and drag others up with them; some get rich at the expense of others.

(interesting aside....)
A few months ago I saw a graph on TV, but was unable to find it on the net to post. It was global GDP over time, done in columns per century.
All of history up until 1900 - the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Indians, Arabs, European colonial era, British industrialism etc etc - add up to 25% of all human economic activity ever.
The 20th century had 50%! In just 100 years we did twice as much business as in the last 10,000.
The other 25% has taken place in the last ten years!!! And it is still accelerating!

Even allowing for the huge increase in population, this is staggering. Mostly, it's bloody awesome. There are more people further from poverty than ever before.
It is also deeply worrying, because every bit of economic activity has some cost on the planet. This cannot continue for ever.

At least they're only singing about it. The people and organisations being protested against have taken a much more active approach to fucking the USA.

Even merc said that the world needs "ditch diggers" (I use that phrase only because it's fairly recognized as a 'lump-all' for less 'skilled' professions.) Yet merc seems to think that those ditch diggers should become better than ditch diggers if they want to make a living wage. How is the inequity even remotely defensible? We need the people who clean and who make widgets and who run the grocery etc and so on. Should they be denied something even close to a comfortable existence? Is the gap between the poor and the rich, and the subsequent squeezing out of the middle class, sustainable? No, it is not. Something, eventually, has to give.

I also wonder about merc's college students. Only because of the constant reminder that his kids get everything they could ever possibly want (crash a car, get a car, for example) am I quite wary that merc's kids are anything remotely close to the young person depicted in the sign in terms of sacrificing some of the finer things in life. This is not an insult. MOre power to merc and his family, good that you can help them start their lives. I'm sure they're wonderful people. But as Brianna pointed out, life is rarely simple, and I don't think the slots merc thinks we should fit in are one size fits all, after all.



Amen. Patriotism is working to make things better, for the good of the country. Patriotism is not hoping everyone falls on their face just so the supposed 'patriot' can say I told you so. That's a dangerous need, to have to be 'right' over being beneficial, over sustaining a country, over the needs of most and in favor of the wants of some.

We had a nice run as a superpower, though. All good things don't have to end, but greed and power-hunger and tyranny will surely take us right to that edge.

There are times when the pie gets bigger, but the 1% keeps the entire increase.


UT, Are you just playing devil's advocate? Regardless of the clarity of the graph, do you believe that the middle class is in the same position, compared to the top 1%, as it was in 1979 or 1955, or 1996?

Thank you Merc. It's important to show the ugliness about these OWS events.
Our biased PDX news media missed that one.
I'm glad you spent your own time searching for that video to document it.
Even if it is just one or two young people among the 5000 - 7000
people in Occupy Portland, it deserves being reported.
Like you, concerned citizens need to stay informed.

Here's one you missed, unfortunately it's the only one I could find.

By Anita Kissee, KATU News
Published: Oct 16, 2011 at 5:28 PM PDT Last Updated: Oct 16, 2011 at 6:46 PM PDT
Sex offender registers Occupy Portland camp as address
But then... maybe there's a cover up going on

I'm a broad skeptic, I tend to try to work out the problem with everything. Also I took Econ 101 and loved it and learned a great deal.

There are no times when the pie gets bigger but the 1% keeps the entire increase.

You can't find those times on the chart. Please look for them and point them out if you find them. This is the economic principle I pointed out earlier: in the good times, the rich get richer faster; in the bad times, the rich get poorer faster.

Economic growth is a tide that lifts all boats, including both the big yacht and the little rowboat.

I do not care what other people make, as long as there is sufficient dynamism in the system that the money can regularly turn over and the 1% can regularly turn over. If the 1% have a lot of it now, that's fine, as long as they continue to want more of it. The only way they can do that is to invest it or spend it to try to make more of it in a risky environment. That creates growth and jobs. And that is the real reason the 1% are not being taxed harder right now: their spending creates more jobs than if the government takes it and spends it.

Lastly... like most of the Wall Street protesters, you have spent the majority of your life in the 1%... worldwide. If income inequality is a problem, you are part of it. Do you feel like you are raping and pillaging the hopes and dreams of billions of people? Well, why not?