December 13, 2011
The NYT doesn’t know it, but the income of the rich rises and falls with the stock market because [top secret: they own lots of stock.] Sorry, but this piece on the decline in the relative income share of the top 1 percent is beyond silly. We know the income of those at the top drops in relative terms every time the market takes a dip.
Of course the stock market took a plunge in 2009, therefore we knew, even before we got the data, that their share of total income would fall. This is why it is very silly for the NYT to be interviewing people about whether there is now a reversal of the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades.
As they say in some parts, it’s the stock market stupid. Don’t waste readers time pretending it is anything else.
[Addendum: Larry Mishel picked up on this point and graphed capital gains income for the top 1 percent against the S&P 500.]
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