1115.org

Last night, Paul Krugman highlighted the new “Historical Effective Federal Tax Rate” numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, which bring into sharp focus how only the rich have benefited from the growth in Bush’s economy. Krugman gives us this instructive little table:

Here’s what the numbers say about percentage gains in after-tax income from 2003 to 2005:

Bottom quintile: 2%
Next quintile: 2.4%
Middle quintile: 3.9%
Fourth quintile: 3.7%
Top quintile: 16%

Top 10%: 20.9%
Top 5%: 27.7%
Top 1%: 43.5%

Unpacking that a bit:
1) The richest 20% of taxpayers saw an increase in real after-tax income. I can’t tell from Krugman’s post (or the pdf tables he links to) if these numbers represent 2-year growth rates or annual growth rates over the 2-year period. Inflation was 1.93% in 2004 and 2.97% in 2005. If the numbers are 2-year growth rates, all other quintiles saw real after-tax income go down. If they are annual growth rates, the bottom two quintiles saw real after-tax income go down marginally, and next two quintiles saw it go up marginally; the only quintile with any significant change is the top quintile, which shows handsome growth.

2) If you take the top quintile and slice it in half, the poorer half grew by about 11% while the richer half grew by 21%.

3) Do it again: take the top decile and slice it in half. The poorer half grew by about 14% while the richer half grew by 28%.

4) Within the top 5%, the creamy layer at the top — the top 1% — grew at 44%, while the next 4% grew by 24%.

Remember Sammy Sosa, back in 1998, going “Baseball’s been very, very good to me”?

It is only the Sammy Sosas of the world who can say “The Bush economy’s been very, very good to me!”