WAGES IN AMERICA SINCE REAGAN ...

According to Bloomberg.com the average income of America's richest 400 households doubled to $263.3 million during the first 6 years of the Bush administration.

Now, I could start with a long presentation on what has happened over the past 8 years under George W. Bush, and even go all the way back to President Reagan to illustrate what has happened since the republican-led "tax-cuts-for-the-rich-let's-make-war-on-labor" policies, but the numbers don't quite paint the right picture.

But graphs do.

Below are three graphs I draw from my forthcoming book, The Myth of the Free Market: The Role of the State in a Capitalist Economy. First up are the wage gains between the richest and poorest Americans between 1947 and 1979. While there are small differences, on average everyone saw their wages go up at relatively equal rates.

There is not much dispute as to why wage gains were relatively equal across all income levels between 1947 and 1949: FDR's New Deal combined with Truman's Square Deal, and the fact that Eisenhower didn't meddle with their economic handiwork, helped keep all segments of America happy.

Things would change, however, when Ronald Reagan came to office. Here are how wage gains were distributed between 1979 and 2004 . . .

As you can see, the wage gains by the richest Americans skyrocketed after Ronald Reagan entered the White House, while America's middle class and its working poor saw their wage gains effectively collapse. You can imagine what happened when George W. Bush came to office.

Things got so bad that the computer I was using to create these graphs couldn't do percentages. It's probably just as well. The numbers are simply ridiculous . . .

What you're seeing here are income gains of $1.9 million under President Bush for America's richest, while the bottom 90% effectively saw their income gains stop and even go backwards (especially for America's working poor).

I'll be discussing this on tomorrow's program.

- Mark