So what about that 99%? The CBO's tables don't distinguish between the 1% and "the rest." It is simple, however, to create a new column in the table to represent that category.

At the bottom of this post is the CBO data for Average Pretax Household Income in 2007 Dollars and Average After-Tax Household Income in 2007 Dollars. A new column is added on the right for the "Bottom 99%." This figure is calculated by multiplying the Average Income for all American Households by 100 to get the Total Income for all American Households, then subtracting the Income for the top 1% to get the Total Income for the Bottom 99% of American Households, then dividing the result by 99 to get the Average Income for the Bottom 99% of American Households. Again, if your eyes are bugging, here's a chart.



The average pretax income for the bottom 99% of American Households in 2007 was $78,051. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's certainly not excessive. Most people can relate to a figure like that. It's a figure attainable through hard work and ethical standards of conduct. It's a figure you can send your kids to college on. It's a figure that can sustain a modest retirement fund.

After paying Uncle Sam, that same household had $63,841 left over. That household's tax burden was 18% of household income in 2007, down from 21% in 1979. Again, the bottom 99% might feel fortunate that its tax burden went down by 3% during this period, but recall that the tax burden for the top 1% went down by 7% during the same period. In other words, while its income was soaring, the tax burden for the top 1% went down two and a third times more steeply than the tax burden for the bottom 99%, whose income trend remained relatively flat.

How flat is that income trendline for the 99%? Flat enough you could sail a boat on it... a boat that's going through some choppy water at the moment and when you do the math it looks like we really are - all 99% of us - in that boat together.