The State of Working Massachusetts report, to be released today, shows that, as of 1996, only the wealthiest 5% of families in Massachusetts benefited from the economic boom of recent years. The rest of the population, on average, has been blissfully unaware that when adjusted for inflation, their earnings have slipped since the late 1980s, the study claims.
Produced by the education arm of Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts, in conjunction with the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, the study says that the robust economy has not restored families' buying power since the recession of the early 1990s. That delay is historically unprecedented.... [but that delay repeats the 1920s and the study only goes back to 1945 - ed.]
"In every postwar recession up to this point, after five or six years, people would have recovered what they lost," says [the report's author, James] St. George. "What's surprising about this recovery is that people haven't recovered what they've lost." Between 1989 and 1996, [the median income] fell 5%, leaving families of four with incomes $3,100 lower than when they started....
...Over two decades, the 5% at the top of the ladder surged far ahead of the 20% at the bottom rung - from earning 11.4 times their wages in 1970 to 16.3 times in the mid-1990s....
The disparity is growing not just between the rich and poor, but the rich are outdistancing the middle class.... Back in the 1970s, the richest 5% of Massachusetts families earned 3.7 times that of the average middle class family. During the 1990s, they moved forward, averaging 4.4 times that of the middle class....
...Policy makers have broadened the gap by targeting tax cuts to the wealthy. [And] since the study runs only to 1996, it does not reflect this year's tax cut of almost $1 billion, primarily through increased exemptions and reduction of unearned income tax rates.
[ So the concentration of wealth is continuing, and as Phil Hyde always says, folks,