Readers rage about the rich and taxes

• Viral video shows how wealth is really distributed

  Think you know how wealth is distributed in America? Think again.

  A YouTube video that's gone viral recently shows that our perceptions of who has money and how much they have is quite skewed. The poor and middle class have a lot less than most people think, while the rich have a lot more. And the Top 1% are off the charts.

  The video, which has been viewed more than 3.8 million MORE

  Tami Luhby - Mar 8, 2013 8:06 AM ET
  Posted in: income inequality, inequality, middle class, poor, rich, top 1%, wealth, wealthy

• Union membership down, income inequality up

  The decline of union membership has been a key driver of income inequality in recent decades, a new report found.

  The drop in unionization accounts for roughly a third of the growth in wage inequality among men and a fifth among women between 1973 and 2007, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.

  The share of the workforce represented by unions declined from 26.7% in 1973 to 13.1% in 2011. This contributed MORE

  Tami Luhby - Aug 30, 2012 9:22 AM ET
  Posted in: epi, income inequality, union, unions

• The poor more likely to live with the poor

  More and more Americans are living in neighborhoods surrounded by people who earn about as much as them ... whether they are rich or poor.

  Segregation by income is growing, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released Wednesday.

  Some 28% of low-income households lived in low-income neighborhoods in 2010, up from 23% three decades earlier. And the number of upper-income households living in upper-income neighborhoods doubled to 18% over that period.

  Pew MORE

  Tami Luhby - Aug 1, 2012 12:01 PM ET
  Posted in: census, cnnmoney, economy, high-income, income, income inequality, low-income, middle class, pew, pew research center, segregation

• OECD warns U.S. on income inequality

  The United States should aim to fix its income inequality problem by improving education for disadvantaged students and raising taxes on the wealthy, according to a new report from a consortium of developed countries.

  The report pointed out that the U.S. has among the highest income inequality and relative poverty among the 34 countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

  "The US education system is less effective than MORE

  Tami Luhby - Jun 27, 2012 4:50 PM ET
  Posted in: fiscal cliff, income inequality, OECD

• Leisure inequality: Who's bumming around more?

  Sure, the wealthy earn more money...but they work a lot harder for it.

  So says a new study that found that while the income gap between the rich and poor has grown since the 1980s, the leisure divide has widened too.

  Highly educated men, who generally have higher incomes, had only 33.2 hours of leisure time a week by 2007, down 1.2 hours from 1985, according to the three National Bureau of Economic MORE

  Tami Luhby - May 2, 2012 9:23 AM ET
  Posted in: educated, income inequality, leisure, poor, rich, wealthy

• The poor stay poor

  The poor are finding it even tougher to escape from the lowest income ranks these days.

  Most of those in the poorest income quintile spent all or nearly all of the period between 1996 and 2006 stuck in place, according to a new report issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Those who did advance didn't move far.

  The research, conducted by senior economist Katharine Bradbury, shows that economic mobility has MORE

  Tami Luhby - Apr 26, 2012 6:00 AM ET
  Posted in: economic mobility, Federal Reserve, income inequality, poverty

• Obama stresses his "middle class experience"

  After being accused of being "out of touch" by his leading Republican rival last week, President Obama trotted out his "middle class experiences" for journalists.

  The president said he went through much of college and law school on scholarship, as did his wife, Michelle. Still, they had to take out student loans that they were paying off nine years later. (The couple had $125,000 in debt when they graduated Harvard Law MORE

  Tami Luhby - Apr 9, 2012 6:00 AM ET
  Posted in: income inequality, middle class, Obama, romney, working class

• Inequality gap widens in home ownership

  The collapse of the housing bubble has further widened the home ownership inequality gap.

  Black households, as well as the poorest households and those headed by high school dropouts, did not benefit much from the housing boom, but got hit hard by the subsequent bust, a new analysis of Census data by Fordham University Professor Emily Rosenbaum has found.

  During the 1990s, blacks and Hispanics made gains that narrowed the home ownership MORE

  Tami Luhby - Mar 22, 2012 10:58 AM ET
  Posted in: blacks, census, hispanics, home ownership, housing, income inequality, wealth inequality, whites

• Rich voters love Romney

  The 2012 Republican primary contest has been defined by a series of roller-coaster lead changes. At various points, 11 different contenders have led national polls.

  But one demographic group -- the wealthy -- seems to have settled on a candidate.

  And their man is Mitt Romney.

  On Tuesday, Romney lost to Rick Santorum in both Alabama and Mississippi. But among individuals making more than $100,000, he received more votes than his competitors.

  In Alabama, MORE

  Charles Riley - Mar 14, 2012 12:20 PM ET
  Posted in: Election 2012, income inequality, Mitt Romney, President Obama, wealthy