From Instapundit, via Avram
Tax Foundation: Income Inequality Is Lower Now Than It Was Under Clinton
Tax Foundation, Reversal of the Trend: Income Inequality Now Lower Than It Was Under Clinton:
The most recent published studies on income inequality use 2006 or 2007 as their end point, without fully correcting for the business cycle. … It is deeply misleading to talk about income inequality without properly taking into account the business cycle. Since the peak of the business cycle in 2007, personal incomes have collapsed to a degree not seen since the Great Depression. The most dramatic collapse has been in high incomes, as the most recent IRS data shows. For example, since 2007 the number of millionaires has dropped 40%, while income reported by millionaires has dropped in half. …
Figure 1 illustrates how the Great Recession has dramatically reduced measures of income inequality. It shows the share of income attributable to the top 1% of income earners from 1980 to 2009. The top 1% income share peaked in 2007 at 22.8% and declined precipitously to 16.9% by 2009. This is about where it was in 1996-1997. …
