News of the Obvious Headline of the Day

Thank you, Bloomberg (h/t nc links):

Investors Are Doing Better Than Workers

 For one thing, growth is still too anemic to return the U.S. economy to anything resembling full employment for several more years, even under the most optimistic assumptions. At the same time, new evidence from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which released its monthly personal income and spending report today, indicates that most of the modest growth has gone to the small share of the population that owns the vast majority of the country’s assets.
Since the beginning of 2013, total personal income has increased by about $323.3 billion, while total employee compensation has increased by just $112.5 billion. People who get their income from renting out real estate, from dividends on stocks and from interest payments on bonds got an additional $186.7 billion. (The rest of the growth came from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits.) Put another way, workers only got about a third of the economic growth generated so far this year. That’s significantly less than their average share of income growth since the beginning of 2010, which was closer to about half.
This might not be so bad if the higher returns on assets encouraged new business investment, which in turn would create more jobs and lead to a broader recovery. So far, this hasn’t happened.

And you know what is even more amazing than that?  All of those dividends and capital gains are taxed at 15%, and none of that money is subject to FICA taxes (except for the big earners who get hit by the ObamaCare tax).  So not only are the people who have so much already getting most of our economic gains, but they pay less in tax on those gains than do people who actually work for a living.