The rich on steroids

President Bush contends the quickening pace of the concentration of wealth among the wealthy is a trend of the past 25 years. It would appear to have been going on a tad longer.

First, from today's Times:

Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

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 shows.

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.

Just after the Civil War, the IRS noticed a similar phenomenon:

February 24, 1869
OUR WORKING CLASSES

How the Poor are Growing Poorer—The Wages of To-day Compared with those of Former Years—Comparative Prices of Food

“The rich become richer, the poor poorer,” by which expression Commissioner Wells, of the Internal Revenue Service, graphically pictured the condition of the American people generally, has a special application to New York. In no part of the country has wealth more rapidly accumulated and concentrated in the hands of the few – in the manner which we have shown in a former paper—or poverty become so general and extended, as in this City. Nowhere are the poor becoming more rapidly poorer than in the wealthiest City of the Union.

This is, as some argue, undoubtedly due to the fact that against all reason and their own interests the laboring classes insist on adopting mechanical rather than agricultural pursuits, and in search of occupation in these branches crowd into large cities instead of remaining in the rural districts, where, if wages are less, the cost of living is also proportionally less. The labor market of many mechanical branches in this City is often glutted—there is no denying that, and at this time of numerous strikes in various branches of industry, this oversupply of labor is a principal source of trouble, and the cause of non-success of many strikes,

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