The bottom 90% of Americans lost $127, the bottom 99% of Americans gained $80, and the top 1% gained $105,637. The bottom 99% is net positive for the year because of around $125 in average capital gains. They can take comfort in efforts by the Right to set the capital gains tax to 0%, which would have netted them an additional couple dozen bucks.
The top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery” isn’t some sort of stats juke, you can take $105,637 and divide it by the the number you get when you add $80 times 99 to $105,637 times 1. That number is 93%, which is the share of income gains the 1% took home.
The Great Recession dropped income for the bottom 99% by 11.6%, completely wiping out the meager gains of the Bush years. And crucially, while 2010 was a year of continued stagnation for the economy as a whole, the 1% began to show strong gains, even when you exclude capital gains.
As you can image, this has increased the percentage of the economic pie that the top 1% takes home. As Saez notes, “excluding realized capital gains, the top decile share in 2010 is equal to 46.3%, higher than in 2007.”
– source rortybomb.wordpress.com