Because there are no longer any rich people in America. At least, that's what the headline of this news item implies since, well, there's no mention of them at all:
American incomes rose in December by the most in eight years, a positive sign for consumer spending that could help the economy sustain momentum early this year.Personal income for Americans rose 2.6 percent last month, the Commerce Department said on Thursday. That was the biggest increase since December 2004 and well above analysts' expectations for a 0.8 percent gain.
Personal income rose in November and December, the Commerce Department said, because of special dividends and accelerated bonuses to beat increases in taxes this year. (Emphasis added.)
Because middle-class and working-class and working-poor Americans typically get bonus packages as part of their employee compensation, and working-class and working-poor Americans reap billions of dollars of stock dividends each year. Feeling the shared prosperity yet?
Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope of reversing the trend, or if we're inexorably doomed to descend into a kind of 21st-Century Feudalism, where the dukes and earls and landed gentry of old have been replaced by hedge-fund managers, dot-com tycoons and energy-company executives; and where the rest of us who reside outside the palace gates have been reduced to the equivalent of tenant farmers, grateful for being allowed to labor in service to our betters in exchange for a daily allotment of porridge. It sure seems like it sometimes.
---Baron V