Tuesday, January 20, 2015

What Rising Inequality Means to You

If the US had the same income distribution it had in 1979, the bottom 80 per cent of the population would have $1 trillion — or $11,000 per family — more. The top 1 per cent $1 trillion — or $750,000 — less.

 -- Larry Summers

1 comment:

  1. Put another way...

    The "real" (adjusted for inflation) median annual household income is around $50,000. So an extra $11,000 per household is a roughly 20% increase in wealth.

    And that's just the median or "average" household, which is driven up substantially by including the ultra wealth of the top 1% in that average. A whole lot of families are only making $30,000 to $40,000 a year, and for them an extra $11,000 is instead a increase of 25% to 33%!

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