Social Stratification

Yesterday I blogged about the current crop of suburban ghost towns, and how the middle class "goal posts" have been moved so far away from where my parents had them, that I really need to find a different word to what exactly is my current social class.

Well, the Wall Street Journal published Income-Inequality Gap Widens just this morning :

The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.

The IRS data go back only to 1986, but academic research suggests the rich last had this high a share of total income in the 1920s.

This, by the way is not actual wealth. This is just income gap. If we considered actual capital holdings, we the non-wealthy are even more screwed and deeper in the proverbial debt hole than before.

The IRS data don't identify the source of increased income for the affluent, but the boom on Wall Street has likely played a part, just as the last stock boom fueled the late-1990s surge. Until this summer, soaring stock prices and buoyant credit markets had produced spectacular payouts for private-equity and hedge-fund managers, and investment bankers.