According to a new report from Oxfam, the wealth and income that the world's richest people accumulated last year would be enough to  eliminate world poverty four times over . Ben Phillips, a campaign director at Oxfam, said that extreme wealth is now one of the major obstacles to solving the problems of extreme poverty. The $240 billion the top 100 billionaires in the world made in 2012 would completely eliminate extreme poverty, the report concludes.

The jobless rate is dropping and the economy has been adding jobs every month for nearly three years. But far too many of those are low-income jobs that don’t pay enough to meet a family’s basic needs, according to a new report that finds that working poor families in the United States now account for 32% of all working families, up from 28% in 2007, the year the recession began.  

" Inequality and Budget Deficits: Why Is Only the Latter an Emergency ?" is a cross-post from Jared Bernstein's On the Economy blog. 

I just read two  sweeping   reports  on the state of income inequality in the U.S. (the second link focuses on state-level inequality) and other advanced economies.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve been so ensconced in fiscal cliff discussions, but I was struck by how much more alarmed policymakers are by the budget deficit than by the inequality situation. There are reasons for that tilt—some good, some bad—but based on magnitudes of the problem, it’s far from clear that our current sole policy focus is warranted.

Middle-class incomes in Michigan fell between 1979 and 2007, even though the state's overall economy grew. A new study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) shows that over the past three decades, Michigan’s middle-class workers did worse than middle-class U.S. workers in general because collective bargaining had eroded more in Michigan than in the rest of the country. 

New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau today show that the middle class received the smallest share of the nation’s income since these data were first reported. The middle 60 percent of households received only 45.7 percent of the nation’s income in 2011, down from the historical peak of 53.2 percent in 1968. But writers David Madland and Nick Bunker at the Center for American Progress Action Fund  say:

By advancing the interests of the middle class in the workplace and in our democracy, unions help build and strengthen the middle class.

The vast majority of America's workers have largely been shut out of the nation’s economic growth over the past three decades, reports the 12th edition of The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Released today and available online, the report finds that the typical American family has added hundreds of extra hours of work each year, while also earning better education credentials, yet is still struggling to keep up.

Several new economic reports out in time for Labor Day point to long-term trends that are driving a declining standard of living for America’s middle- and low-income workers. Here’s a quick summary (click on chart to expand).

In refusing to turn over  more than two years of his tax returns, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney brags that he paid all his taxes but "not a penny more." Meaning no matter what he paid, he coughed up a pretty minimal amount, however you slice it. Not only can Romney get away with legally paying very little in taxes, but his low tax rate is within an already low national tax rate (click to enlarge chart).

How would you like a 100 percent boost in wages?

If you’re in the top 1/1000th of the U.S. income earners, you already got one. Since 1980, a household making $1.5 million in 2010 has received a pay increase of more than 100 percent, after adjusting for inflation, according to New York Times reporter David Leonhardt (click on chart at left to expand).

Leonhardt points to inequality and a long-term slowdown in the economy as behind the nation’s current woes. This economic slowdown began after the 2001 recession, which never had a strong recovery.

Join noted journalist Timothy Noah at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., this Friday, July 20, at 12 p.m. for a discussion of his new book , The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It . Noah will explain how the Great Divergence has come about, why it threatens American democracy—and what we can do to reverse it.

Books will be available for purchase and for author signing. (“Rise of the Stinking Rich” is my vote for the best-named chapter in his book.)

Be sure to RSVP for the event here .