THE WAR BETWEEN THE CLASSES: America’s Second Civil War

September 2, 2011

By Arlen Grossman

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class that’s making war, and we’re winning.”–Warren Buffett

Our country seemed to have its economy under reasonable control for several decades (roughly from the 1940s through the mid-1970s). The middle class grew stronger, the disparity between the rich and poor was not extreme, and the economic conditions improved for nearly everyone. 

The gap between the rich and poor widened to historic levels, and by the time George W. Bush left office, the disparity between the rich and poor was the widest in our country since the 1920s, and the largest in the developed world.

Here are some of the battlefield numbers:

      *The top one percent of taxpayers saw their share of national income rise from ten percent in 1981 to about 24 percent now. The share for the top one-tenth of one percent of households has tripled to over 12 percent during the same period.

       *The richest ten percent of Americans received 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007.

       *The tax rates for top earners ranged between 70 to 91 percent in the years from 1936 to 1980, as the economy hummed along.   From the Reagan years to now, the top tax rate dropped to its present 35 percent and less than half as much after tax breaks and deductions.

         *Corporations and the wealthy pay far less taxes than any other developed nation. If you paid even a dollar in U.S. income taxes last year, you paid more than Bank of America, Boeing, General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, Citigroup and many other profitable American corporations.

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