Last night, Justin Wolfers Tweeted a chart from Visualizing Economics' Catherine Mulbrandon showing Lorenz curves by income source: labor, capital, business and capital gains.
It basically shows that different parts of the population get their income way differently than others - and that the top 20% gets at least half of all income types.
Here's what we're looking at:
Labor:
- The bottom 60% of the population has access to about 25% of all income generated through labor
- The next 20% gets it's own slice of about 25% of labor income
- And the top 20% of the population owns 50% of labor income
Next up is business and capital, which have about the same curve shape:
- The "bottom" 80% of the population has to fight over 20% of income generated through business and capital
- The top 20% of the population enjoys the "remaining" 80% of business and capital income
- The top 20% of the population owns about 95% of income generated through capital gains
- 80% of the population gets the rest
Here's the chart:
What's even scarier is that this data is from 2007 CBO data- the Great Recession is likely to have made these curves even steeper.
We are living in a highly unequal society.