Julia Conley at Common Dreams writes—'Staggering' New Data Show Income of Top 1% Has Grown 100 Times Faster Than Bottom 50% Since 1970:
New data released Monday explains the numbers behind Sen. Bernie Sanders’ often-cited statistic that the three richest Americans hold more wealth than the 160 million people who make up the bottom 50% of the population.
Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent published what he called “stunning” findings from UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman, showing how both an explosion in annual earnings by the rich and an increasingly regressive tax structure have combined to allow the top 1% of Americans’ wealth to triple over the past five decades.
Meanwhile, working people are taking home just $8,000 more per year than they did in 1970.
In what Sargent called “the triumph of the rich, which is one of the defining stories of our time,” the richer a household is, the more its take-home wealth has grown in the past 50 years. His data:
For top 1%, average income has risen by $800,000 since 1970.
For top 0.1%, it has risen by $4 million.
For top .01%, it has risen $20 million
Bottom 50%? $8,000 [...]
The top 1% of earners make an average of more than $1 million per year after accounting for taxes they pay, a 50-year increase of more than $800,000—100 times the growth rate of the bottom 50%.
The wealth of the top .1% is five times larger than it was in 1970, while that of the top .01% is seven times larger, at over $24 million in 2018.
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency. We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending, and recognize our debts to the Global South. Of course, none of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that corporations have over the political process.”
~~Naomi Klein, The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal (2019)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2017—Republicans ratcheting up class war from above with attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, food aid and more:
Republicans have spent years cutting holes in the social safety net. Now they’re ready to bring it down entirely and let vulnerable Americans hit the floor with no net to break the fall. The plan for a concerted attack includes an executive order and congressional legislation:
The president is expected to sign the welfare executive order as soon as January, according to multiple administration officials, with an eye toward making changes to health care, food stamps, housing and veterans programs, not just traditional welfare payments. [...]
The exact provisions of the pending bill are unknown, but a conservative group closely aligned with lawmakers said Republicans intend to pass broadly focused legislation.
“They’re thinking about welfare reform in a large, all-encompassing way, not a program way,” said Jason Turner, executive director of the Secretaries’ Innovation Group, a group of conservative officials who run state-level social programs and met with Ways and Means Committee Republicans on the Hill last week.
This is a lifetime dream for Republicans like House Speaker Paul Ryan, and a move Republicans will justify as being needed to reduce the debt that they’re working to increase through their tax plan:
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Somebody scheduled the impeachment markup opposite our show! Greg Dworkin rounds up i-word (and British election) news. Senate Gop leaning toward witness-less "trial." OMB has a new excuse for stiffing Ukraine. One new name in the Ukraine game.
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