Published in Yahoo Finance

By Darren Walker

The gap between rich and poor is by some measures as wide as its been in nearly a century. According to tax data tracked by Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the average income for the top 1 percent of households in the US climbed 7.7 percent last year to $1.36 million. That group saw pay climb at almost twice the rate of income growth for the other 99 percent whose pay averaged a mere $48,768. Pretty stunning, no?

The implications are certainly being felt politically with polarized elections here and around the globe and economically as well with companies for instance changing up what they sell and where they operate.