Obama Decries U.S. Income Gap That Has Widened Under His Watch

The gap between rich and poor that President Barack Obama yesterday called a “fundamental threat to the American dream” has grown during his administration.

The richest 10 percent of Americans earned a larger share of income last year than at any time since 1917, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. Those in the top one-tenth of income distribution earned at least $146,000 in 2012, almost 12 times what those in the bottom tenth made, Census Bureau data show.