[retrahdggd]

Your point is irrelevant. Some people got out of the lower brackets, some people got out of the higher brackets. So? How does that disprove the findings?

We are talking about the expansion of income in the United States' economy from 1979 to 2007. The richest of us grew at an exponential rate compared with the poorest of us. An 18% increase for the bottom 20% over 28 years doesn't even keep up with inflation.

Your point about upward and downward mobility does not effect in any way the findings of the study-which clearly shows that income increases in the lowe brackets has not even kept pace with inflations.

It also shows what a bunch of horse manure "trickle down" theory is.

Bul - you clearly thrive on this stuff because it validates your belief in systemic unfairness, and as such you have no skepticism about the derived insights. I'll accept that the data is correct, but the findings are ridiculous.

Suppose you have 100 people in a sample and you sort them into deciles by income. Let's suppose that total income for those in the top decile is $10 Million while total income for the bottom decile is $10K. Ten years later, two people from the bottom are now millionaires. The rate of income growth for those originally in the bottom 10% is more than 20000% (this is all just straight math), right?

But that's not how this pre/post analysis works. In this analysis, they're left in the "pre" because they didn't make much, but taken out of the "post" because they did. Therefore, the bottom 10% had virtually no income increase. This would be the finding but it would be TOTALLY UNTRUE!!!

Why not show the change in income by education or by profession? It would be far more meaningful to show that an investment banker's income increased 200% while a bus driver's income went up only 60% and a housekeepers income just 10%. Plus it would be more actionable through minimum wage increases or some other fair labor practice law.

BTW - I'll also note that the income disparity grew most under Reagan and Clinton and least under Bush 41 and Bush 43. (think recession)...