How can this be?

Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating.

Moreover, those who say such things can produce many statistics, including data from the Census Bureau, which seem to indicate that.

On the other hand, income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91% by 2005.

The top 1% — "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left — saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26%.

Meanwhile, the average taxpayers' real income rose by 24% between 1996 and 2005.

How can all this be? How can official statistics from different agencies of the same government — the Census Bureau and the IRS — lead to such radically different conclusions?

Media Choose Data That Fit Their Notions