I don’t deny that a portion of the Occupy Wall Street movement is tainted by socialists, leftists and anarchists. But the recent CBO report provided ample ammunition for the mainstream of the OWS movement, indicating that they are right on target with their assertion that crony capitalism has created incredible income inequalities.
At the Columbia Journalism Review, Ryan Chittum slices and dices claims by various commentators that income inequality is a myth.
Here is part of Chittum’s latest blog:

“James Pethokoukis, who recently hopped over to (the conservative American Enterprise Institute) AEI from Reuters, shows how to combine the worst tendencies of liberal Slate (contrarian shtick), the moderate Business Insider (misleading, hyped headlines), and think tanks (paid-for spin), and puts it in Internet-friendly listicle format.”

Under a headline, “Five reasons why income inequality is a myth — and Occupy Wall Street is wrong,” Pethokoukis’ claims are summarily crushed by Chittums.

“This, at least the first part of it, is false in a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me kind of way, which is the whole point. That kind of headline draws you to read the post, which proceeds to give seemingly sound (but ultimately misleading) evidence for why inequality isn’t growing in order to plants seeds of doubt about whether that whole inequality thing is really a problem,” Chittums wrote.

He proceeds to offer the basic realities.

“The poorest 20 percent of households made an average $11,034 last year, $179 less than they did in 1979. The median income rose to $49,445 last year from $46,074 in 1979, while the top 20 percent made an average $169,633, or $48,536 more than in 1979.
“But the real blowout hasn’t been between the 80th and 99th percentiles. It’s been in the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent, which is why that “We Are the 99 percent” slogan has struck such a chord. The poorest member of the top 1 percent made $347,000 in 2007 (the latest year I can find), more than double the $165,049 they made in 1979.
“(AEI’s) Pethokoukis gets it totally wrong in his first point, reporting on the conclusions of a working paper by Robert Gordon which he sums up as “In other words, income gains were shared fairly equally” between 1979 and 2007.
Chittum then offers several charts to show that Pethokoukis’ assertions are a laughable attempt at spin.
“But don’t take it from me,” he adds, “or from the well respected, nonpartisan CBO. Take it from Pethokoukis’s source himself,  Gordon:

“’The evidence is incontrovertible that American income inequality has increased in the United States since the 1970s.’

“That’s the very first sentence of Gordon’s paper, which Pethokoukis somehow overlooked.”