On Mar 6, 2007, at 6:52 AM, Daniel Davies wrote:
> just to give some sort of scale to the improvements made in the lot
> of the
> poorest quintile of households, the improvement between 1978 and
> 2001 would
> have been roughly enough to buy a caffe latte every weekday:
>
> http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/12/heres-your-fucking-latte-sir
1978 was a peak for bottom quintile incomes; it wasn't surpassed for 10 years. Their level in 2005 was $610 higher (in 2005 dollars), which is less than a latte a day (though maybe not at Dunkin' Donuts). Their incomes for 2005 - $10,655 - is $959 *below* their all- time peak in 1999 (again in 2005 dollars). The top 5% (average income $281,155) gained $5,785 between 1999 and 2005. That's enough for 6 lattes a day!
Doug