The rich are getting much richer, much faster than everyone else

By Kevin G. Hall

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Over the past quarter-century, and especially in the last 10 years, America's very rich have grown much richer. No one else fared as well.

In 2004, the richest 1 percent of households - 719,910 of them, with an average annual income of $326,720 - had 19.8 percent of the entire nation's pretax income. That's up from 17.8 percent a year earlier, according to a study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez.