American Inequality in Six Charts

See the link below for informative graphs and information.

It's not a coincidence that there was a peak in the share of pre-tax income going to the top one per cent of earners just before a major recession/depression.
demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe studied cycles of history, and found a pattern of high inequality leading to severe economic decline, ending with a major war. They reported on their analysis in the book "The Fourth Turning".

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/11/inequality-and-growth-what-do-we-know.html

November 18, 2013
Posted by John Cassidy

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I’ll start with an updated chart from Emmanuel Saez, of Berkeley, which shows the share of pre-tax income enjoyed by the top one per cent of earners over the period from 1913 to 2012. The data, which comes from the Internal Revenue Service, is for market income: it includes realized capital gains but excludes government transfers.

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The U shape of the chart should by now be familiar. After rising in the Roaring Twenties, the income share of the one per cent fell sharply in the postwar period. Since the late nineteen-seventies, it has been climbing again, albeit in a somewhat zig-zag fashion. The top earners’ share of overall pre-tax income peaked at about twenty-four per cent in 2007, fell back during the Great Recession, and then recovered strongly. In 2012, it was about twenty-three per cent.

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