Mind the gap

I finally listened to Radio West's interview with Timothy Noah, who wrote a series of articles on income inequality on Slate.com. It's worth a listen and/or read.

The gist of it is this: there's a growing income gap between the rich and poor. Today, the top 1% of wage earners take home 24% of all income earned in this country. In the late 1920's, just before the Great Depression, the top 1% took home more like 18% of all wages. We actually see more income inequality now than was present during the Gilded age, yet there's almost no public outcry. Indeed, people are angry at the government and over taxes rather than angry at the rich over their increasing compensation. Noah documents the economic and political forces that are likely at work, showing it's a host of small things like changes in the tax code and increasing executive compensation, that have added up to the great divergence between incomes at the highest and lower levels. The NY Times has an editorial on the ethics of letting such an income gap continue.

And of course, today I read this blurb. Guess avoiding paying taxes doesn't count into the whole not being evil mantra.