One in Three Americans in Poverty While .01% Earn 50% of All Capital Gains

And don't let Fox News tell you that the top 1% pays 50% of the taxes. They don't. The top 1% employ people to find all of the loopholes and deductions so that they do not have to pay taxes. But yes, the top .01% of the nations earn half of all the capital gains. God only knows, the top 1% probably take in the other half +/- a few percentage points.

Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.

Meanwhile one in three Americans are in poverty, or very close to it.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.