As this chart (from the Economic Policy Institute) shows, the rate of growth over the past three decades has been overwhelmingly skewed toward the top of the income scale. More than half of all growth during this time has gone to the top 10 percent of income earners, with a majority of that going to the top 1 percent. And as the graph demonstrates, as a whole the richest 20 percent of the country didn't do as well over that period as they did during the previous era because the wealthiest of the wealthy were busy devouring more than their share of income growth.
There is a temptation to see rising inequality, to see the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer, and simply say, "That's the way it works," or, "Life's not always fair." But this chart shows us that it is possible to grow the economy and have all segments of the population enjoy the benefits. That is exactly what happened during the period from 1947-1973. Each respective bracket saw their income rise between 85% and 116% (look at the yellow bars). And if you throw the richest 20 percent out of that equation (who were ostensibly doing pretty well to begin with), each group effectively saw their income double. Now, in 1973 we were far from having economic "equality" among Americans. But things have only gotten worse since then.
Unless, of course, you are part of the top one percent of income earners (or better yet, the top one-tenth of one percent, or the top one-hundreth....you get my point). Things are getting harder for middle-class Americans and, according to these statistics, they have been for some time now. Long gone are the days when one income was sufficient enough to support a family. I'm not going to address any specific steps on how to correct this troubling trend in this post (except to say that repealing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that forgot about the majority of the country would be a start). A comprehensive discussion on this topic would require a lot more space than I've devoted here. But I just couldn't ignore the opportunity to share this information, even if there is little chance that anyone else's eyes will grace this post.
