Overall gains in Minnesota's ACT scores looked like good news. Average scores went up but masked declining performance by the state's students of color.
Even the exorbitant income gains by the kids at the top of the national totem pole can't disguise the fact that pay is essentially stagnant for the majority of Americans.
According to the New York Times, "the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation."
The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.
These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000.
People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.
The "average," calculated here as the mean, is very misleading. For a better sense of what's happening, look at the median earnings. According to the Times almost half of Americans reported incomes of less than $30,000, and two-thirds make less than $50,000.
The GOP prosperity doctrine — which traces back to Herbert Hoover's "anyone not only can be rich, but ought to be rich" — depends on us looking at the size of the pie, not who actually takes the pieces.
