frenzy!

interesting statistics in this nytimes.com article about US incomes in 2005 . needless to say, the rich got richer. some choice quotes:

Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows.

and

People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.

The group's calculations showed that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more, saving them almost $1.9 million each. Over all, this small number of wealthy Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investment income as a result of the tax-cut law.

The nearly 90 percent of Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved on average $318 each on their investments. They collected 5.3 percent of the total savings from reduced tax rates on investment income.

i mean, of course, people who earned less saved less. that's no surprise. but the fact that what (roughly) 133.895 million people saved on average on an individual basis equaled 0.00017% of what, on average, the richest 11,433 people saved individually seems ludicrious. but then, that's capitalism.

thanks to the achenblog for the tip.