America's Road to Zimbabwe

Recent economic news has been troubling. For those concerned about hedge fund managers, Wall Street billionaires, trust fund babies and investment bankers, and their ability to continue to make millions while laying off thousands, there is some wonderful news!

From the NY Times today, "Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster":

The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher. The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.

So Bush says that this road-to-Zimbabwe American economy has been going on for more than 25 years - as if his Administration hasn't worked tirelessly to push most Americans off the economic cliff.

Maybe Bush and his cronies aren't so incompetent after all. It looks like they've gotten exactly what they want.