Over the past few decades America's wealthiest have had it pretty good, especially compared to the rest of us, taking an ever-bigger share of the nation's income. Now you can track their takeover with an interactive map.
Between 1979 and 2007, the top 1 percent of earners saw their incomes soar by 275 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, Americans in the bottom fifth of earners saw their incomes rise less than 20 percent.
To put the staggering rise in income inequality another way: The incomes of the bottom 90 percent of Americans, adjusted for inflation, grew by $59 on average between 1966 and 2011, while the average income of the top 10 percent grew by $116,071 during the same period, according to an analysis by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston.
To express this graphically, here is an animated map showing the 1 percent grabbing more and more of the nation's income pie since 1977, from University of Oregon graduate student John Voorheis. The redder the map, the more equal the country. The greener the map, the bigger the share of income going to the 1 percent.
(Hat tip: Wonkblog)
Related
Before You Go
