Timothy Noah's "The Great Divergence."

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_great_divergence/features/2010/the_united_states_of_in

equality/introducing_the_great_divergence.html

Noah's article regarding income disparity is an analysis of the causes of income disparity, but there is one section I find compelling. Comparing income data from the Census with income date from the IRS, Saez and Piketty come up with three discoveries regarding income disparity and the "Great Divergence" that has occurred in the past half decade.

1) The American aristocracy, unlike in the pre-World War II era, derive most of their income from their employment wages from rather than wealth holdings such as dividends. So disparities in wealth today exist within the American wage structure.

2) The share of national income going to the top 1 percent more than doubled during "The Great Divergence" (of growing income disparity, particularly since 1970), and now stands at 21 percent. This is evidence for some economists to raise taxes on the rich.

3) The share of national income going to the top .1 percent of Americans has increased nearly fourfold during the Great Divergence, showing growing inequality that becomes more extreme the further you rise in income distribution. Canada and the UK have a similar trend, but Japan and France do not. This top percent of American wealth share 7.7 percent of the national income in the United States.

These findings point to a disturbing phenomenon of inequity in American wealth distribution. My question for politicians is why this growing divergence between the richest in America and the rest of the society is not an impetus for taxing this concentration of wealth.