Surprise: The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get More Numerous

[babylonsister]

Surprise: The Rich Get Richer and The Poor Get More Numerous
by Sam Zuckerman



Steven Bustin lives with his wife in a four-bedroom, 2,600-square-foot house in Novato. He drives a gray 2006 Audi A4. He earns more than $200,000 a year in salary and commissions from his job as head of sales for Podaddies, an Internet startup that sells online video ads.

Tamara Johnson lives with her three children in a two-bedroom apartment in the Sunnydale housing project in San Francisco’s Visitacion Valley. She drives a used 2003 Buick Sebring with 74,000 miles on it. Last year, she brought in just under $12,000 from her job as a home health care worker, supplemented by disability payments for two of her kids.

Bustin and Johnson represent California’s increasingly polarized economy.

The gap between the state’s rich and its poor is getting bigger. The bulk of job growth in California over the last generation took place at the top or bottom of the pay scale, a trend that has accelerated since the beginning of this decade. Jobs in the middle are scarcely growing at all.

The changes are documented in a report based on census and tax data set for release today by the California Budget Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.

“The story of the past generation is one of widening income inequality,” the group says about the state.

It’s well documented that the gulf between highly paid and low paid people is growing across the country. But it is more pronounced in California, according to census and tax records.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3362/