Monthly Archive for April, 2006

CEO Median Compensation in 2004 ($14m)

From a USA Today article

CEOs pulled in median compensation of about $14 million in 2004, up 25% from 2003, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the largest public companies filing annual proxies through March 25. Compensation includes salary, bonus, incentives, stock awards, stock-option gains and potential returns from fresh option grants. Data were provided by executive-pay-tracker eComp Data Services.

If you remember from my post on the income reported by President and Vice President, $14 million is greater than both of them put together. Also this means that over half of the CEOs of the largest public companies are in the Top 0.01%.

[tags] CEO compensation [/tags]

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President Bush’s 2005 income

From the AP via ABC News

President Bush reported adjusted gross income of $735,180 for last year, on which he paid $187,768 in federal taxes, according to the president’s return released Friday by the White House.

The White House also released the 2005 tax return filed by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne. According to the return, the Cheneys have overpaid their taxes this year and are entitled to a refund of about $1.9 million. Their adjusted gross income was about $8.82 million.

. . .

I compared the incomes reported in this story to the Excel file (Table A6: Column S, Column U) produced by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Piketty. At $735,180 the Bushes’ income would be in the Top 0.5% of all income in the United States. While the Cheneys’ income of $8,820,000 place them in the Top 0.01%

[tags]Bush’s income, Cheney’s income[/tags]

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Is the Top 10% getting richer?

Frome a Paul Krugman editorial in the New York Times

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, “Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?,” gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn’t a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that’s not a misprint.

Just to give you a sense of who we’re talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn’t give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it’s probably well over $6 million a year.

[tags] Paul Krugman [/tags]

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Breakdown of Income Share Top 1% (1917-2002)

Finally lets breakdown the Top 1% of income earners into three groups (99.0th to 99.5th, 99.5th to 99.9th, and 99.9th to 100th percentiles). The last group is graphed in red and shows the share of income going to the Top 0.1%. Their income share begins with a high of over 8% of total income then dropping below 5% and jumping back up to over 7%.

It is much more volatility than the next highest .4% (99.5th to 99.9th in lavender) or the lower .5% (99.0th to 99.5th in yellow)

breakdown_top1

Datasource: Excel file produced by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Piketty

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Breakdown of Income share Top 5% (1917-2002)

Taking a closer look at the share of income going to the Top 5%, we see that the more dramatic change in the income share can be found among the Top 1% of income earners. Beginning with a high of almost 20% of total income of the United States going to the Top 1% then dropping to a low of 8% and creeping back up to 17%.

At the same time the share going to other 4% is more consistent, between 13% to 15%.
Top 5% Income

Datasource: Excel file produced by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Piketty

[tags]ecomomics, income inequality, Emmanual Saez, Thomas Piketty [/tags]

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