TRICKLE DOWN | Stops after 7%

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

The May 2013 Harper's Index (prepared in March 2013) uses data from the Center for Equitable Growth at UC Berkeley to contrast the 11.2 percent growth in incomes of the top 1 percent of earners during the recovery with the -0.4 percent loss for the remaining 99 percent of earners.

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center has reviewed the latest Census data to contrast the change in net worth for the top 7 percent of households and the remaining 93 percent.

Over the past two years, the net worth of the top 7 percent of households has grown 28 percent to an average (mean) of $3.2 million, whereas the remaining 93 percent has dropped 4 percent to an average of $134,000.

Same message as from UC Berkeley contrast.

To those who have much, more is given; to those who have little, some shall be taken away.

In this connection, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) cross-examined Treasury and Federal Reserve representatives at a March 7 Senate Banking Committee hearing. She contrasted the handling of a repeated money-laundering case with a repeat drug offender:

[I]f you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you're going to go to jail. If it happens repeatedly, you may go to jail for th rest of your life. But evidently if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night. I think that's fundamentall wrong. (Harper's, May 2013, 23-24).