“People who don’t have money, don’t understand the stress”

by digby

In 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% (Table 1) but the

gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99%

incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income

gains in the first year of recovery. Such an uneven recovery can help explain

the recent public demonstrations against inequality. It is likely that this uneven

recovery has continued in 2011 as the stock market has continued to recover.

National Accounts statistics show that corporate profits and dividends

distributed have grown strongly in 2011 while wage and salary accruals have

only grown only modestly. Unemployment and non-employment have

remained high in 2011.

This suggests that the Great Recession will only depress top income

shares temporarily and will not undo any of the dramatic increase in top

income shares that has taken place since the 1970s.

Thank Goodness. With all the whining getting even louder, I thought the bottom must have dropped out again:

“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it’s very hard,” Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

“I feel stuck,” Schiff said. “The New York that I wanted to have is still just beyond my reach.”

The smaller bonus checks that hit accounts across the financial-services industry this month are making it difficult to maintain the lifestyles that Wall Street workers expect, according to interviews with bankers and their accountants, therapists, advisers and headhunters.

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”

Hang in there buddy. It’s getting better all the time. For you.

The good news is that as even more money flows back into the upper 1%, there will be more and more vastly wealthy plutocrats who have so many extra millions that they can afford to play the political system like they do the market and ensure that the government looks after their class interests. It’ll be fine.