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From the monthly archives:

December 2006

The New Inequality

by Catherine on December 10, 2006

in Critiques and Commentary

Here is another New York Times article. This one touches on some of the themes that keep coming up in the income inequality discussion, such as the role of the global economy, education, government taxes policy, and the changes in the income distribution during the last 30 years:

. . . From World War II through the 1970s, while most Americans were getting solid raises every year, the incomes of the richest 1 percent were doing only a little better than inflation. Since the 1980s, the two groups have switched places. The affluent have received huge gains, and everyone else’s pay growth has slowed down. For the last six decades, in other words, the American economy has been much more of a zero-sum game than we might like to believe.

Tagged as: Education, Inflation, United States, World

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2005 US Income Distribution part 2

by Catherine on December 5, 2006

in Distribution of Income, VE Infographics

I went back to my 2005 US Income Distribution graph and changed the scale to match the logarithmic scale used in Gapminder’s World income distribution 2003 graph which shows the historical income distribution from 1970-2000 for selected countries.

{Click on the graph to take a closer look}
2005 log Income Distribution magnifying glass

See Also: Part 1 and Part 3

[tags]US Income Distribution, Gapminder, World Income, Census Income Distribution[/tags]

Tagged as: Distribution of Income, Income - Average, Median, Scatter plot, United States, US Census, World

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Who are the high income earners?

by Catherine on December 4, 2006

in Uncategorized

From the New York Times this article, Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices, caught my attention. It talks about a two-tier income stratum within professional jobs. Rather than earning the typical six-figure income under $400,000 there are people making millions due to:

. . . people [who] latched onto opportunities within their fields that offered significantly higher incomes [or] have moved to different, higher-paying fields — from academia to Wall Street, for example — and a growing number of entrepreneurs have seen windfalls tied largely to expanding financial markets, which draw on capital from around the world…Three decades ago, compensation among occupations differed far less than it does today.

Among these high income earners you can find:

  • Partners in Hedge funds and private equity firms
  • Real estate developers
  • Lawyers
  • Dot-com entrepreneurs
  • Scientists/entrepreneurs who sell their discoveries
  • Owners of ordinary businesses who sell them
  • CEOs
  • Wall Street investment bankers
  • Sports stars and celebrities

and the children of the super-rich

Tagged as: Celebrities, CIA, Distribution of Income, Financial markets, Income - High, World

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