STUNNING STATISTICS

New statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else. Even in the USA, a country that sometimes seems inured to income inequality, these figures are truly stunning. "In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 per cent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 per cent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 per cent to each of these households. ....The bottom 99 per cent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 per cent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 per cent increase in income." (New York Times, 25 March) Most American workers counted themselves lucky if they had a microscopic increase on the previous year while the millionaires wallowed in additional millions. RD