Richer? Says Who?

   Americans are getting wealthier, says the government. The Bureau of Economic Analysis, part of the Department of Commerce, has come out with a new set of figures that show real income rose 2.7 percent in 2011, after adjusting for inflation. Before that adjustment, "personal income across America grew an average of 5.2 percent in 2011, after rising 3.8 percent in 2010."
   Income per person in 2011 -- adjusted for inflation -- was $36,500 across the country, an increase of 2 percent from the year before. Without that adjustment, per capita income nationally averaged $41,600.
   And, in this new set of data, which also measures price levels in states and metro areas, the bureau noted that the most expensive state was Hawaii, with a price index of 116.0, followed by New York at 114.3 and the District of Columbia at 114.2. The index puts the national average at 100.
   The figures were released Wednesday as a preliminary prototype data set, and the BEA said it planned to update the numbers yearly.
   The numbers show real personal income rising for every state, ranging from an increase of 1.3 percent in Mississippi to 10.4 percent in South Dakota.
   The numbers show we're all getting richer, right?

   Now here comes the but.

   What the numbers do not show is the distribution of wealth. As noted in other studies, including one by Prof. G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz, the top 1 percent of American households own 35.4 percent of all privately held wealth, and the next 19 percent own another 53.5 percent. So 20 percent of households control 89 percent of the wealth in America.
   Statistics are useful sets of numbers, and can be very helpful in forming policy decisions, both political and economic. But an average shows only  an overall trend for all Americans, and says nothing about distribution.