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发帖数: 1181 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 Military 讨论区 】
发信人: delta2013 (第99头驴), 信区: Military
标 题: ZT：top 1% of earners enjoyed 95% of the income gains since the recession ended
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Fri Sep 13 12:39:25 2013, 美东)
A recent study reveals that the top 10% of earners in the U.S. took home
more than half the country’s total income in 2012. That's the highest level
recorded since the government began collecting the data a century ago,
according to a New York Times analysis.
Related: Why Incomes Could Fall For the Next 30 Years
The study by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty also found that the
top 1% of earners enjoyed 95% of the income gains since the recession ended
. Meanwhile, incomes for the rest of us stagnated from 2009 to 2011 and grew
only about 1% in 2012.
Related: Income Stats Suggest American Dream Is Dead
Why have incomes for most Americans hardly moved while those of the top
earners took off?
It could come down to that old adage: it takes money to make money.
“Excess capital that wealthy individuals and institutions had to invest...[
during the crisis] has allowed them to accumulate even more wealth than
others who didn’t have excess investment capital and are struggling in this
economy," Nomi Prins tells The Daily Ticker in the above video.
Prins is a senior fellow at the non-partisan (but liberal-leaning) think
tank Demos, a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, and author of the
upcoming All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive
American Power.
She says wealthier Americans with cash to spare were able to snatch up
foreclosed homes during the crisis at bargain basement prices and collect
gains from the housing recovery that followed. Those without extra money
could not take advantage of those investment opportunities while struggling
to just get by, or keep their homes out of foreclosure.
Essentially the wealthy could better weather the crisis and capitalize on it.
It's the more affluent Americans that have benefitted from “the recovery in
the stock market due to cheap money,” as Prins puts it. The richest 10% of
households own around 90% of the stock market, according to The New York
Times.
Prins says many of the advantages that wealthy households have seen since
the crisis are due to policies coming out of Washington. That includes the
Federal Reserve’s zero-percent interest rate policy and government
subsidies for the banking system at its weakest point. |
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