Between 1980 and 2010, notes an analysis of IRS tax data this past spring by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, incomes for America’s top 1 percent more than doubled, after inflation, to an average $1.02 million.
Average incomes for the nation’s top 0.1 percent, over that same span, more than tripled, and the top 0.01 percent - average incomes more than quadrupled, to $23.8 million in 2010. In 2010, Forbes reports, America’s 400 richest collectively held a rather awesome $1.37 trillion in wealth.
But much of the wealth of the super rich is actually hidden.
Tax-havens host over 3.5 million paper companies, thousands of shell banks and insurance companies, and tens of thousands of shell subsidiaries for the world’s multi-nationals, trans-national companies.
Fewer than 100,000 people - just .001 percent of the world’s population control over 30 percent of the world’s financial wealth. Americans make up, according to various previous surveys of the world’s ultra rich, almost a third of the world’s super wealthy. That would put the American share of unrecorded offshore private assets as high as $10 trillion.
What about the rest of us?
After inflation, average incomes for America’s bottom 90 percent fell - by 4.8 percent - between 1980 and 2010. Americans in this 90 percent averaged $31,337 in 1980, only $29,840 in 2010.
Average incomes for the nation’s top 0.1 percent, over that same span, more than tripled, and the top 0.01 percent - average incomes more than quadrupled, to $23.8 million in 2010. In 2010, Forbes reports, America’s 400 richest collectively held a rather awesome $1.37 trillion in wealth.
But much of the wealth of the super rich is actually hidden.
Tax-havens host over 3.5 million paper companies, thousands of shell banks and insurance companies, and tens of thousands of shell subsidiaries for the world’s multi-nationals, trans-national companies.
Fewer than 100,000 people - just .001 percent of the world’s population control over 30 percent of the world’s financial wealth. Americans make up, according to various previous surveys of the world’s ultra rich, almost a third of the world’s super wealthy. That would put the American share of unrecorded offshore private assets as high as $10 trillion.
What about the rest of us?
After inflation, average incomes for America’s bottom 90 percent fell - by 4.8 percent - between 1980 and 2010. Americans in this 90 percent averaged $31,337 in 1980, only $29,840 in 2010.
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