Its Good to be the King (or the 1% in America)

per Mike Konczal who parses the World Income Database for us, we have the wonderful tidbits

• “The top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.”
• (T)he gains become quite high the further you walk up the inequality ladder

and Timothy Noah points out from the same paper that

• (R)oughly one out of every four dollars earned in the United States during 2007 went to people whose family income exceeded about $420,000 in 2010 dollars
• The one percent's income share fell to 20.95 in 2008 and 18.12 in 2009. But in 2010 it bounced back up to 19.77

Check out the chart above, showing the income distribution over time.  To summarize it, income inequality was - oh so briefly - falling after The Great Recession, but those days are over, the 1% are doing just fine, thank you very much, and the rest of us are, well, sucking eggs all over again.
It still baffles me as to why people aren't more upset at this.  I suspect "Making it into the NBA" syndrome, i.e., the absolute conviction by most Americans that all they have to do is work really hard, and believe in themselves, and they can achieve anything.
Which I am all for, except that some things (like being in the top 1%, or making it into the NBA/NFL) are, by definition limited!  Only 1% of the people can be in the top 1%, y'know?  Then again, in the immortal words of Barbie, Math is Hard (ok. Math Class Is Tough.  Deal with it...)