To the editor:

How is the trickle-down economy working for you? “The rich make us all richer”? (Cal Thomas, March 6). Can we stop repeating this falsehood? It doesn’t now nor has it ever squared with the facts. In 2006, the top 0.01 percent of Americans averaged 976 times more income than the bottom 90 percent. The only other time the number was so high was in 1928, when the average was 892 times, and the economy was wiped out a year later.

The concentration of wealth has not, as Cal suggests, “made us all richer.” To the contrary, if you churn through U.S. census data and labor statistics data, you will see that over the last 40 years, real incomes have grown substantially for the top 10 percent (household income around $100,000 and up), and not at all or very little for everyone else.

So please stop foisting the great lie that all boats rise when the rich do well. It was not true prior to the Great Depression and it is not true now. As Warren Buffett told the New York Times, “There is class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, and we’re winning.”

Paul Atchley,
Lawrence