Income Percentile Calculator 1979 to 2007 Shows Growing Disparity

With all the "Occupy Wall Street" protests complaining about how the Top 1% are prospering at the expense of the other 99%, it was interesting to hear this week's news from the Congressional Budget Office which pretty much agrees with their argument. It is rare to see a government branch agreeing with a grassroots movement this far from elections! It seems that in the 27 years from 1979 to 2007, the top 1% of Americans saw their incomes increase by 275% while the bottom fifth of Americans saw their incomes increase by 18%. But what about all the incomes in between? I pulled the full PDF file from the CBO and pulled all the data for now only 1979 and 2007 but 3 other intermediary years (1986, 1993 and 2000) to build my very own income percentile calculator for anybody to use! You simply enter any income amount and it interpolates the percentile that income would be for each of the five years for which I pulled data (1979,1986,1993,2000,2007). It shows how over the years the percentage of the population that the income is greater than as well as what "top percentage" you are. It maxes out at being in the "Top 1%" for income since that is as high as the data goes. For example $40,000 a year used to put you in the top 35% (65 percentile) back in 1979, but by 2007 that only put you a little better than the middle (53.7 percentile.) Likewise $70K used to put you in the 90th percentile in 1979, but by 2007 it put you barely at 80th.