(no subject)

Normally I'm not big on memes but cyranocyrano posted a really good one, so I'm running with it:

If you're considering writing in Stephen Colbert for either the Democratic or Republican primaries (Or, hell, Libertarian, Natural Law, American Independent, Green or any other primary), whether it's because you support his no nonsense policies on immigration (flaming moat filled with fire retardant crocodiles!) or because you want to send a message to TPTB that you'd prefer to vote for a television character than any of the candidates that are being offered, feel free to repost this.

All of the above reasons plus I'm in serious Colbert withdrawal...

Happy days are here again!

Chasm widens between rich and poor in U.S.

NEW YORK: The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office show.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the 3 million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

[…]

At every income level, Americans had more income, after adjusting for inflation in 2005, than in 2003, but the increases ranged from almost imperceptible for the poor to modest for the middle class and largest for those at the top.

On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.

Jennifer at Sadly, No! comments:

This is why we’re careening towards a depression. Not recession, but depression. You can’t take all the money and put it in a few hands and expect the economy to keep chugging along. It doesn’t work that way, no matter how long and hard conservatives have pretended that it does.