Obama skews battle lines in 'class war'

[mcg]

Obama skews battle lines in 'class war'
Michael Hiltzik, March 4, 2009

Republicans are criticizing his budget plan, but the proposed redistribution of wealth toward the lower and middle classes only reverses a longstanding trend, Michael Hiltzik writes.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik4-2009mar04,0,288534.column

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Yet the true class war of recent American history is the one that has pitted the upper 1% of income earners against almost everybody else. Over the last three decades, a period that spans Republican and Democratic administrations alike, average family income has scarcely budged an inch, while the wealthy have grown measurably wealthier.

In 1979, the top 1% of U.S. households earned eight times as much as the middle 20% and 23 times as much as the bottom fifth; by 2005, the Congressional Budget Office found, the upper crust touched 21 times as much as the middle class and 70 times as much as the bottom. Adjusting for inflation, the average American worker made 16% less in 2004 than in the 1970s, according to economist Benjamin M. Friedman.

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