The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just updated their invaluable data series on income inequality and the results are startling. Income inequality among households, both before and after Federal taxes, grew more quickly over the last two years of the series, 2003-05, than over any other two-year period on record, back to 1979.

Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95% to the top 5%. That is, had the income distribution remained as it was in 2003, the income of each of the 109 million households in the bottom 95% would have been $3,660 higher in 2005.

If this is the ownership society at work, I think we need to have a serious talk with the owners.

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This morning’s Wall St. Journal features an editorial praising Whoopi Goldberg’s rant against the estate tax on a recent episode of “The View.”

From this we establish a few things:

• "The View" is not a good venue for discussing tax policy;
• Whoopi doesn’t get this and is spreading destructive misinformation.

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