Cross posted from my blog
Andrew Sum & Joseph McLaughlin, "How the U.S. Economic Output Recession of 2007-2009 Led to the Great Recession in Labor Markets," Center for Labor Market Studies (Jul. 2010):
In short: worker productivity is up, corporate profits are up, wages are down. As far as I'm concerned, companies are exploiting the lack of worker bargaining power to pay their employees far less than their labor is worth. If anything, it is the low-income earning worker that is being robbed.
And as for the argument that the rich pay a disproportionately large amount of the federal government's revenue, I'll turn to Alex Knapp (citing CBO data from 2007):
The taxes barely dent the disparity in wealth between the wealthy and the rest of us.
Higher income taxes on upper brackets should be justified on the basis that the rich did not make their wealth in a vacuum. They not only utilized the labor of an under-paid work force, but also benefited from a publicly-funded infrastructure (one that is often geared specifically toward their needs) and government provided security.
For many more stats about inequality in America see Mother Jones.
See previous diary by me:
Demolishing Michael Barone's defense of income inequality