The Economic Policy Institute is sometimes referred to in the press as a “left-leaning organization,” which means that their research may be sound (it is) but their sympathies are on the side of equality and fairness for all people. I have often turned to their website for nonpartisan data, always carefully sourced, about economic trends.
In this post, EPI documents growing income inequality in the United States. The graphs show the enormous income growth of the top 1% since 1979, as compared to the income growth of the bottom 99%. In the period since the Great Recession of 2008, the top 1% have seen significant income growth, while the bottom 99% have seen stagnant income.
The average income of the top 1% is 30 times the average income for the other 99%.
Income inequality is near its historic high, which occurred right before the Great Depression.
The period when the gap narrowed most was in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 1980, inequality has increased significantly.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Makes you really think about the land of the free, not home of equality for all. We must do better than this for our kids. The crazy thing is that the better the quality of life for all residents, the better the nation as a whole. Greed is the thing unfortunately.
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Saw a special on TV about AMERICAN GREED. OY! SAD.
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These reports hit it right on the head. Since 1980 we have been losing the middle class, not because of upward, but because of downward mobility.
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Good report. We have a corrupt government.
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Cyberspace entity, Democrats for Public Education, hasn’t posted anything new at the website since Jan. 12.
Shakers and Movers, they’re NOT.
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And we all know who was elected in 1980. The start of tricle down economics that somehow failed to trickle down.
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“Trick-le down”
“Trick” is the root
Of “trickle down”
A concrete suit
For those who drown
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Great poem! Hits the mark.
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The correct term for these neoliberal economic policies is pissed on not trickle down.
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I happened to see a video of an interview by Malcolm X from 1963 at UC Berkeley. It was shown on CSPAN. As I watched the 45 minute discussion I began to realize that if the word he used – “Negro” was substituted with “average American” and “white man” was substituted with “wealthy people” many of his statements and observations would be just as relevant today! http://wsautter.com/read-save-walts-books-ipad
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Reblogged this on Kmareka.com and commented:
How can we stop this dangerous trend? More support for housing, education, and workforce development would help.
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I hear Robert Reich saying, “S.I.T.Y.S.”
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I think you have to keep in mind, too, that the US is still benefiting from the asset accumulation and accrued value of the (older) middle class.
That won’t last forever.
The shrinking middle class has immediate effects, but the long-term effects will be really profound. Every time a family slips out of (relative) economic security, that means fewer kids are growing up middle class. It ripples. This is just the first round.
Wait until there’s a much larger group of adults who didn’t have the advantage of economic security when they were growing up. Then you get into a kind of a death spiral and it gets really ugly.
In some ways we’re all still “living in the house the middle class built” as a country. Once we burn thru that buffer the decline will accelerate. I think it’s already happening.
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Astute observation.
😎
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Yes. And the older middle class is living off of the gains of post WWII America where we were pretty much the last country standing. Technology and globalization are leading to the Walmartizing of nearly all middle class jobs. The decline of labor as a voice in politics directly correlates to the rise of inequality and failure of government. We no longer create wealth, we move it around and reshape it. The bailout of Wall Street created a plutocracy that should instead have paid the price of bad judgement. Instead of the financiers being held accountable as the market demands, the government transferred risk and, as a result consequences, to the middle class. Unfortunately, voters accept the inequality and decline as the new normal.
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Are we on the verge of another Great Depression brought on by the fraud, greed and arrogance of the 1%—-the oligarchs, for instance, the Koch brothers, the Walton family and Bill Gates?
Who suffered the most during the last Great Depression and during the global financial crises caused by many of these same arrogant fools in 2007-08?
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“Are we on the verge of another Great Depression” – I don’t know about a Great Depression but we certainly can forward to a bursting of the Student Loan bubble in the near future. MHO http://wsautter.com/read-save-walts-books-ipad
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I think when history examines 2008, it will be relabeled as the Second Great Depression. Geithner and the Fed did a magical sleight of hand to not so much as prevent a depression, but mask the effects and spread our the pain of a true depression over a longer period of time. The consequences were shifted to the middle class and small business, away from the well connected. Unemployment and underemployment was much higher than reported. The banks are still too big to fail and nothing was learned as taxpayers are still on the hook as protections weaken. Those poison assets on the books of banks were never talked about again. What should have been a correction was a coup de grâce of the middle class after years of trickle on, supply side economics.
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I posted this the other day. Worth repeating:
The top 4 Hedge fund people in 1983 earned $10.4 billion.
About 158,000 kindergarten teachers combined earned 8.3 billion.
Who paid the most in taxes? Just guess.
Who benefited society more? Just guess
Best government money can buy.
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I don’t remember there being “hedge fund people” in 1983.
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I didn’t know much at all about Hedge Funds, so after I read your comment, I … Googled it and ended up on Wiki. I learned that Hedge Funds go way back.
“During the US bull market of the 1920s, there were numerous private investment vehicles available to wealthy investors. Of that period the best known today is the Graham-Newman Partnership, founded by Benjamin Graham and Jerry Newman, which was cited by Warren Buffett in a 2006 letter to the Museum of American Finance as an early hedge fund.
“In the 1970s, hedge funds specialized in a single strategy and most fund managers followed the long/short equity model.[clarification needed] Many hedge funds closed during the recession of 1969–70 and the 1973–1974 stock market crash due to heavy losses. They received renewed attention in the late 1980s.[17] During the 1990s, the number of hedge funds increased significantly, funded with wealth created during the 1990s stock market rise.”
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There are probably two distinctions between the proto-“hedge funds” and the hedge funds that developed in the late 90s and 2000s. One is that the latter don’t really “hedge” as much as they just trade, whether via long or short positions. The other has to do with scale. It wasn’t until the mid to late 90s that “hedge funds” became a significant market phenomenon, either in terms of the size of their holdings or the number of funds. LTCM was probably the first major “hedge fund” whose failure called attention to the systemic risk created by these funds. (It’s the first one I remember, at least.) A few years after the LTCM collapse, hedge funds started proliferating like plague and went mainstream. In the 1990s, the apex of power and prestige in finance was at the big Wall Street banks, culminating (and perhaps ending) with the Goldman Sachs’ IPO. The hedge funds of that time were still relatively obscure by comparison and were the domain of “quants” — Wall Street eggheads and Nobel laureate economists who used complicated trading and pricing models. In the 2000s, the model shifted to where working at a Goldman or JP Morgan was seen as a quasi-apprenticeship of several years before leaving for a hedge fund.
One thing people tend to forget, or never knew, is that while there were a small number of hedge funds that made fabulous amounts of money in the 2007-2008 period, most of them got caught on the long side of RMBS and CDOs and took big, big losses, just like most investors.
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The more basic point of my comment, however is that Gordon must have his date wrong. Even assuming that there were 4 people in 1983 who could justifiably have been called “hedge fund people,” they did not earn $10 billion dollars. Maybe in 2013, but not in 1983.
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Google’s “Ngram Viewer” is often instructive about questions like this.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hedge+fund&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chedge%20fund%3B%2Cc0
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Sorry, Misprint. 2013 – Yes ti would make a difference.
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In a book written last year, Peter Mallouk claimed there were 10,000 hedge funds, with an astoundingly high rate of demise. He provided evidence that showed the promised high, long term returns from investments in hedge funds didn’t materialize. Even their fall back defense, of less volatility wasn’t true. Mallouk says the savvy on Wall St., like Buffet, have wagered against hedge fund returns that even match a market index.
The lies of hedge fund performance are as bogus as the manufactured crisis in education and the tech industry’s future job
numbers for students, at schools, that cough up big bucks for computerized tests, from Silicon Valley and Libya.
It’s all a game to take money from the citizens of Main Street.
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“Globalism, like neoliberal economics, is an instrument of economic imperialism. Labor is exploited, while peoples, cultures, and environments are destroyed. Yet the propaganda is so powerful that people partake of their own destruction.” Paul Craig Roberts
” John MacKenzie’s marvellous study Propaganda and Empire: the Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960 (1984) reveals how the rulers of the British Empire used every representational medium at their disposal (postcards, theatre, dance halls, music, posters, children’s literature and penny journalism, films, school textbooks) to legitimize their nefarious actions in the world.” Professor Michael Welton
You may take the “boys” out of the country, but can you take the “country” out of the
“founders”?
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It just CRACKED me up to see Tea Party people like Harlan Underhill, who is against the public commons and fiscal equality and equity, collect Social Security.
Collectivism prevents, when tempered and balanced, income inequality.
Yes, these are the hard lessons the little people are going to have to learn. . . . . even the educated ones. I will never forget how a pre-k teacher, who is now 50, told me a few years ago, “How is it that this (reforms) is all happening? It did it come to this, and why is it happening to us?” Collectivist thinking and values need to be re-infused into our culture. We have been duped, distracted by Bruce, Chris, Kim, and Chloe, sucked into the vortex of good looking poorly made stuff at Target, hooked onto glorified sports figures whose lifestyles, houses, and supermodel wives offer no redeeming value to our lives; we have been snagged by sitcoms that distract us rather than leave us time to read real literature, mis-counseled by Oprah, who is a blobby oligarch and has no compassion toward the average person, and hypnotized by music from Miley, most of which from her and most others in the music industry is soft core porn.
Add to that a bad, mass produced frankenstein food market that is poisoning and addicting Americans.
. . . . . A healthcare system that is for profit, and where even real medical issues are hard to get covered.
Then a dumbed down and starved education system . . .
They – the overclass – are devouring us alive.
But it’s ONLY and STRICTLY because we have let them . . . . .
And THAT is why we have gaps in income.
I know very few people want to say it’s “our fault”, but let me ask you this: if a bully comes up and punches you in the face, you have every right to say he victimized you. You get up, wipe the blood off your nose, and leave the scene.
But if he does it again the next day, and you don’t hit him back (assuming you told an “ally” who was supposed to help you, yet did nothing for you), whose fault is that? Did you take responsibility for yourself the second time? The question is rhetorical, and THAT typifies the average American. Distracted, individual, indifferent, and apolitical.
And people want to know why they have income gaps!
Really?
I just mailed out my check to NPE . . . .
I think BOYCOTTING blocks, akin to super PACS, would be the most powerful thing on earth.
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To Robert Rendo:
I really love your expression in “…Did you take responsibility for yourself the second time? The question is rhetorical, and THAT typifies the average American. Distracted, individual, indifferent, and apolitical.”
My question to you that IS average American truly “three generation” typified or “FIRST GENERATION immigrant” of American?
Please note that I am first generation immigrant who is very proud of my own hard headed about democracy AND who will DEFINITELY fight with all my might to protect or promote the CIVILITY and HUMANITY even at the cost of my life.
Unlike me, the majority of immigrants will prefer live without conscience AND submit their dignity to get a bit of crumb in career, fame, lusty lifestyle from crummy corporate or private institutions.
It would sound that I am righteous person. However, in a family as a foundation or a unit, parents and older siblings should educate, cultivate, and protect all upcoming younger children in a way that these youth can sustain their living with civil rights, build their dreams and fulfill their UNIQUE talent.
In conclusion, would “ADULT” children obey to parents and older siblings who intentionally harm them, or leave (or fight back) the abusers quickly? Similarly, would educators obey the law that is set up by corporate and billionaire club, or fight back the injustice? Back2basic.
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Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to write, but here is my condensed answer:
1. My perception is that this is the average American over several generations, especially those who are coming off of and out of the baby bloom generation and post WWII prosperity. Interestingly enough, I am not convinced that less educated people vs. more educated people are all that much different when it comes to being politically sensitive and aware. There are people in McMansions who are just as ignorant as people in 1,500 square foot homes and people in dangerous housing projects. Lack of awareness is lack of awareness. How many people REALLY know what ALEC is and what the implications of it are?
2. It would be interesting to conduct a study to measure who is in the “indifference” mix: documented and undocumented immigrants of various generations, Americans, etc. It would be a difficult thing to measure, I think.
3. Indifference and vapidness are indifference and vapidness. It makes no difference, in the final analysis, if you are an immigrant new to the country, first generation, second generation, or if your descendants came over here on the Mayflower.
4. To be objective, there are immigrants who find our harsh capitalist and Darwinian system to be a much softer version of that which their homeland had offered, and therefore will not make waves here because the grass to them feels greener.
5. There are probably many undocumented immigrants who do not like what is going on here but don’t make waves for fear of deportation and high visibility. This is very unfortunate and is upsetting to me.
6. To me, it does not matter, for the most part, if other countries have it much worse the United States because EVERYTHING is relative, and if we had it better here before but have lost our fiscal, civil, and economic rights, then we have degraded ourselves and have decayed as a society, I feel.
7. And, not that everything is so wonderful in Canada, Japan, Western Europe, Australia, or Scandinavia, but those nations are set up FAR more equitably in terms of social contracts and safety nets to prevent the exact conditions that have pervaded Central and South American and that are now unfolding ever more rapidly in the United States.
8. Interestingly enough, I know of a friend of mine who used to live nearby who did state to me (she is American and midwestern and probably 5th generation) that she would give her life to fight for fiscal and social equality in this country and to fortify and protect, and expand the middle class. She is a superb example of how I think people ought to think, because first and foremost, she is articulate and politically literate.
I hope this abridged response answers your question . . . . .
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Thank you Robert for your precious time to educate me.
Yes, your confirmation in “…because first and foremost, she is articulate and politically literate” does not reflect on the image of Union leader like Mr. Mulgrew, Mrs. Lily, and many more political figures like SOME Deans of Ivy League universities…
However, my statement in immigrants who succumb in a crumb of fame, money, prestige lifestyle, and lusty material living can truly reflect on the image of many current authorities [as well as can be on the image of NON-immigrants] whether they are descendants who came over here [or even if they were born (as per my emphasis)] on the Mayflower as per your expression.
I may not be well articulate in English and politically literate, but I have lived through an experience with both BRUTAL communism and capitalism that is both WITH and WITHOUT CONSCIENCE. I believe in HUMANITY and CIVILITY so that I definitely fight with all my might to reserve and to protect the DEMOCRACY BY ACTION, NOT JUST BY LIP SERVICE.
My belief and action is my own affair between God and me. Back2basic
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