Where’s the income beef?

Brad DeLong has a post up about the dizzyingly unequal distribution of income in the United States. He quotes Paul Krugman: So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that. A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains. But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint. Just to give you a sense of who we're talking about: the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that this year the 99th percentile will correspond to an income of $402,306, and the 99.9th percentile to an income of $1,672,726. The center doesn't give a number for the 99.99th percentile, but it's probably well over $6 million a year.... The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story. Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? I'll confess those numbers even give me some pause -- and I've historically been unfazed by income inequality. And yet, there is surprisingly little grumbling about this within the mainstream political discourse about this, with the partial exception of rising protectionist sentiment. Why? I'd offer three possible reasons -- all of which could be at work: 1) Those on the bottom of the income spectrum are increasingly tuning out politics -- call this the Hacker-Pierson thesis; 2) Those at the bottom of the income spectrum believe that they will eventually rise to the top of the income spectrum, and therefore see no reason to complain -- call this the David Brooks thesis; 3) Income is not the only measure that counts in evaluating Americans' well-being, and on other factors, the distribution of gains is far more even. I can think of two economic benefits in particular: a) Asset prices. Americans have done well the past decade not through income gains but capital gains, in the form of their stock and housing portfolios (not to mention intergenerational wealth transfers). These gains have been impressive even given the bubble-like quality of some of the rise. While I have no hard data on this, and will gladly welcome empirical falsification, my hunch is that these gains might be more evenly distributed than rises in income; b) Leisure. I've blogged about this before, but Virginia Postrel has an excellent New York Times summary from last week. The key point -- the gains in leisure are particularly strong at the bottom of the income spectrum. c) Consumption. Inequality in consumption is not as stark as inequality in income. Furthermore, in many areas productivity gains have drastically lowered prices. Daniel Gross touches on this point in his Slate column on Chipotle and other restaurant IPOs: [T]he restaurant industry has done a Wal-Mart. Through tight control of sourcing, a focus on logistics, and a firm rein on labor costs, it has managed to keep a lid on inflation. Yes, a Big Mac costs more than it used to. But virtually every fast-food joint still has a 99-cent menu. And it's not just fast food that's cheap. As noted in this space in 2004, between 1982 and 2004, according to figures provided by the ever-expanding Zagat survey, the average cost at the same restaurant rose from $29.23 to $50.32, a 2.62 percent annual rate?substantially below the rate of inflation in that period. Even if incomes are stagnant, there is a large category of goods for which more can be purchased for less. Call this the Drezner thesis -- unless I'm wrong, in which case call it typical half-assed blog analysis. I'll be happy to entertain other hypotheses. UPDATE: One additional hypothesis that is clearly emerging from the comments is that the growth in income inequality does not generate resentment because of the changing sources of that income. The rich are no longer rich because of inheritances, but because of their own effort. To explain, let me quote from Rajan and Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, page 92 yet again: One statistic best sums up the changes that have taken place: in 1929, 70 percent of the income of the top .01 percent of income earners in the United States came from holding of capital -- income such as dividends, interest, and rents. The rich were truly the idle rich. In 1998, wages and entrepreneurial income made up 80 percent of the income of the top .01 percent of income earners in the United States, and only 20 percent came from capital. Seen another way, in the 1890s the richest 10 percent of the population worked fewer hours than the poorest 10 percent. Today, the reverse is true. The idle rich have become the working rich! Instead of an aristocracy of the merely rich, we are moving to an aristocracy of the capable and the rich. ANOTHER UPDATE: James Joyner still wants someone to show him the money.