“What we find is that the wealth is going not just to the top 10 percent of Americans, but really to the tiny slice at the very top, the top one tenth of one percent, even the top one hundredth of one percent. The Congressional Budget Office, using these income tax statistics, calculated that in 2005, the top 100th of one percent, the richest 11,000 households — had an after-tax income that averaged $24 million a year. That was up from a $4 million average for this group back in 1979. That’s a remarkable change. In contrast, the middle fifth, the middle 20 percent of Americans, saw their incomes over this 1979-2005 period go from $41,000 a year to $50,000 a year. The concentration of income at the top is remarkable and sustained, and over the last 30 or 40 years, it has resulted in relatively little trickle-down to those lower on the economic ladder.” Jacob Hacker, co-author with Paul Pierson of “Winner Take All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class.”
“Although the United States isn’t the only country that has experienced rising globalization and increasing reliance on technology, it’s one of the few nations that has experienced a big increase in winner-take-all inequality in which the gains are going to the very top. Of the countries that have experienced similar trends, the US is most pronounced. That raises serious questions about the view that this is somehow linked to changes in our economy or society, because many of those [related] changes have occurred in other nations that haven’t experienced these kinds of runaway gains at the top.” Paul Pierson
