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The Shocking Trend In U.S. Individual Income Inequality 1994-2010
Townhall.com ^ | October 26, 2011 | Political Calculations

Posted on 10/26/2011 8:57:23 AM PDT by Kaslin

Perhaps the most common measure of income inequality in a nation is the Gini Coefficient (aka the "Gini Ratio"), which ranks the amount of inequality there is in a country on a scale from 0, which represents perfect equality, where everyone would have an equal share of the nation's income, to a value of 1, which represents perfect inequality, where one person would have all the income, but everyone else has none.

So now, thanks to so much media attention being focused on the Occupy Wall Street "movement" (aka "politically-oriented publicity stunt"), where many activists (aka "not-too-bright people") appear to be upset at "the Top 1%" (aka "really high income earners"), who they claim have "gotten too rich" (aka "earned a high income by doing things that satisfy other people's needs"), we thought we'd use the "Gini coefficient" (aka "a well-established mathematically-based method for measuring inequality") to find out how out of whack things have become in the United States over the years.

Or more specifically, the years from 1994 through 2010, for which the U.S. Census has published detailed data related to the incomes earned by Americans based on their annual surveys of the U.S. population. Our chart showing the trend in income inequality for all individuals as measured by the Gini ratio for these years is below: Gini Coefficient for the U.S. Population, 1994-2010

We were shocked to see the overall trend from 1994 through 2010 take the path it has, because it's so completely contrary to what we keep hearing in the news.

We only ask that someone ask the media for their reaction to this disturbing data!


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: income; liberalism; taxes
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To: motoman
Actually, what this data “proves” is that they've used a different method for calculating Gini than everybody else. I can arrive at any conclusion I want, if I just cook the books.
21 posted on 10/26/2011 11:16:21 AM PDT by stormer
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To: Williams
Section 8 welfare recipient, receiving free rent, free income, raising a family

The taxpayer cost of section 8, free food stamps, health care, cell phones, public education, subsidies on cable TV, internet, utilities, plus the cost of government hirelings to administer all this, is easily $4,000/month tax free per welfare case. To make $4,000/month in interest after taxes someone would need to invest $2,000,000 in T-bills. A welfare recepient is functionally a multimillionaire. Is that factored into their comparisons?

22 posted on 10/26/2011 11:47:41 AM PDT by Reeses (Have you mocked a Democrat today?)
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To: Williams
Let’s say you are a Section 8 welfare recipient, receiving free rent, free income, raising a family, you are a drug addict, you are protected by a multitude of anti-discrimination rules pertaining to welfare and Section 8....

I've got a family like that next door. A good for nothing old dad, and a white welfare mama with multiple children from different black men. And she has a live-in lesbian lover. They all do drugs, don't do any maintenance work on the home, and the cops are constantly called there for problems. The rest of the block is comprised of good normal people who hate this "family".

What irks me is seeing the lesbian couple bring a bag of beer bottles every day to their front stairs, pull them out and get drunk. While I work on maintaining my home. They trade their welfare income for the booze and drugs. So they are living on our tax money, and not contributing anything to society. Multiply this by millions, and see that it is us who should be protesting in the streets.

23 posted on 10/26/2011 12:03:06 PM PDT by roadcat
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To: cicero2k
If the GIRI is too high, you risk political upheaval based on envy. If it is too low, then, you risk discouraging the wealth creator class and everyone is poor.

It seems the Marxists Democrats are encouraging the former in order to create the latter.

24 posted on 10/26/2011 7:05:36 PM PDT by Mind-numbed Robot
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To: Kaslin

Good one. I tried to post this yesterday from the original site and was told to post it in blogging. Stupid.

This is the most important article published on FR all month. This completely debunks OWS and the Obama meme.

It’s a major class warfare fail.


25 posted on 10/26/2011 8:18:54 PM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: stormer

Here’s their site. The data sources are all referenced there. I’d like to see you debunk them.

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/10/real-story-behind-rising-us-income.html


26 posted on 10/26/2011 8:23:49 PM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: 1010RD

If the number of people with very high incomes shrinks as their income increases, and those with low incomes become more numerous as income drops, in aggregate, the Gini index will not change.


27 posted on 10/26/2011 8:49:59 PM PDT by stormer
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To: stormer

Then the Gini coefficient is useless as a measuring tool for income inequality isn’t it?

In your example it would completely miss any income inequality. The concentration of wealth is the entire purpose of the index.


28 posted on 10/27/2011 2:22:33 PM PDT by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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