The richest 1 percent of Americans hold almost $2 trillion more wealth than the bottom 90 percent.

The 20 highest-paid CEOs made only 5 percent of the average made by hedge-fund managers and private-equity executives. And we thought CEOs were overpaid!

In 2007, the average hedge-fund manager made $892 million — almost $1 billion in one year.

The tax rate paid on income more than $1 million dropped from 65 percent in 1944 to 23 percent in 2005.

Low-income workers often pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do the wealthiest. Minnesota is one state allowing this.

Hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who made $3.7 billion last year (no, it’s not million, it’s billion), was able to avoid paying $150 million in taxes last year because of a tax loophole the Senate refused to close. The loophole lets billionaire fund managers pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries, 15 percent.

Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich, proposed eliminating this loophole and the one letting fund managers shift compensation to offshore havens. His bill would bring in $50 billion in taxes, estimated the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation — not to mention the obvious argument for justice. It didn’t pass.

Hedge-fund contributions to lawmakers more than doubled during the 2007-08 election cycle, about three-fourths of the donations going to Democrats. The party that rhetorically sides more with the poor caves in to big-money influence just like Republicans.

Barack Obama’s decision to eschew public financing because he can bring in three times as much in campaign contributions as John McCain is more evidence that our political system is corrupted by money. But I have to say I’m glad his huge campaign chest comes from millions of small donations — evidence of democracy at work.

The shame is not that there are billionaires. Let them indulge their obsession with making money. The shame is that we let their money wield excessive political power.

This explains the escalating inequality during the last decades, the redistribution of income from the rest of us to the wealthiest few. One fact in the series of seven articles The Nation devoted to this subject brought a chuckle out of me. A proposal to raise worker pay up to $12 an hour prompted an opponent of the living-wage movement to call it “a sneaky way of bringing socialist economies to America’s cities.”

Figures, doesn’t it? In a knee-jerk reaction to the word “socialism,” working for justice leads to the devil. Good is colored evil, evil good. Nice way of controlling public policy for the rich by the rich.

A similar rhetorical reversal is hurling the charge of “class warfare” at those who expose the fact of class warfare. Why should those who move around other people’s money be rewarded more than others? They’re not smarter; they’re only smart in one specific way.

I’d like to watch them try to teach kindergarten or those with special needs. I’d like to watch them try carpentry or plumbing or welding or nursing. I’d like to watch them try to communicate in a spiritual or diplomatic setting. I’d like to watch them meet the challenges of a small-business owner.

These occupations contribute more to society’s welfare than do financial manipulators. As for their risks, workers of all kinds in today’s economy face risks comparable in their lifetime significance. A really “free market” would not slather economic rewards on a favored few. In a healthy democracy, political and economic power are not concentrated in the hands of a few. We need to tax the wealthiest Americans fairly to avoid going the way of Latin America or Asia, which have even greater wealth disparity.

This is the opinion of Jeanette Blonigen Clancy, author of “God Is Not Three Guys in the Sky: Cherishing Christianity Without Its Exclusive Claims.”