PROOF: When it comes to income inequality, no other developed economy does it quite like the U.S.A. [View all]

[kpete]

The chart above, from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) using the World Top Incomes Database, shows how income gains between 1975 and 2007 were divvied up in 18 OECD countries for which the researchers had data. Nowhere did the rich benefit as much as in America.

As you can see, in some countries like Denmark the vast majority of income gains went to the bottom 90 percent -- SOCIALISTS! -- while nearly half of U.S. income gains went to the richest one percent because freedom, baby.

America’s top 1 percent of earners accounted for 47 percent of all pre-tax income growth over that time period. And that’s excluding capital gains, for God's sake. Throw in the rest of the top 10 percent, and you’re looking at a group that got four-fifths of all income growth between the Ford and George W. Bush administrations. The rest of us were left to scramble for the last one-fifth of extra income. If you add in capital gains, which typically accrue to the highest earners anyway, the picture is probably a lot worse.

That trend had a big impact on total income share: Between 1981 and 2012, the top 1 percent more than doubled their share of total pre-tax income. They now account for about 20 percent of the nation's earnings. That's more than any other OECD country for which we have data:



MORE:
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2014-FocusOnTopIncomes.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/income-inequality-charts_n_5241586.html

http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/OECD2014-FocusOnTopIncomes.pdf