Perfectly Legal
The Secret Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich and Cheat Everybody Else
Chapter One
The Rich Get Fabulously Richer
In 1977, the richest 1 percent of Americans had as much to spend after
taxes as the bottom 49 million. Just 22 years later, in 1999, the richest
1 percent-about 2.7 million people-had as much as the bottom 100
million Americans. Few figures derived from the official government
data on incomes present more starkly the growing chasm between the
rising incomes at the top and the falling incomes at the bottom.
Those in the top 1 percent saw their average income, adjusted for
inflation to 1999 dollars and after income taxes were paid, more than
double from $234,700 in 1977 to $515,600 in 1999. Meanwhile, the
55 million Americans in the poorest fifth of the population lived in
households whose average income fell from $10,000 in 1977 to $8,800
in 1999. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group
that advocates for the poor, calculated these figures from the sophisticated
income data that the Congressional Budget Office began c ... read full excerpt from Perfectly Legal: The Secret Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-Rich and Cheat Everybody Else ebook
