"Wages and salary income in 2012 amounted to 42.6 percent of GDP, the lowest since 1929.
Corporate profits after taxes amounted to a record 9.7 percent of G.D.P. Each of the last three years has been higher than the earlier record high, of 9.1 percent, which was set in 1929.
The charts help to demonstrate how the postrecession economy differs from the one before the downturn. In the three years from 2005 through 2007, the share of G.D.P. going to corporate profits was 1.5 percentage points lower than it was during the years 2010 through 2012. The share going to workers was 1.1 percentage points higher during the earlier years.
Corporate taxes, as a proportion of corporate profits, rose to a four-year high of 21.6 percent in 2012, but remained well below the long-term average level. Personal taxes also hit a four-year high, at 14.1 percent of personal income, but were still well below the historical average."
[Click on the link below for the full text of Floyd Norris' column and be sure to look at the graphics.]
