When the Wall Street Journal picks up the story on income inequality, you know the situation maybe getting out of hand. Here verbatim is some of the WSJ coverage – go here for the complete story:
“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 bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000.”
I think this is a FYI/Risk Alert to the WSJ’s readership – which of course are quite likely to be in that top 1%. Another factor – the Economist has been again trumping WSJ by tracking this issue with regularity for the past 2-3 years. A little WSJ catch up.