[rad-green] 'Staggering' New Data Shows Income of Top 1% Has Grown 100 Times Faster Than Bottom 50% Since 1970

*https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/09/staggering-new-data-shows-income-top-1-has-grown-100-times-faster-bottom-50-1970
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/09/staggering-new-data-shows-income-top-1-has-grown-100-times-faster-bottom-50-1970>Common
Dreams           December 9, 2019'Staggering' New Data Shows Income of Top
1% Has Grown 100 Times Faster Than Bottom 50% Since 1970"The bulk of a
generation of economic growth has been captured and concentrated in a few
hands, and many people have barely seen any of it."by Julia Conley, staff
writer*

[image: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Berkshire
Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett are the three richest people in the U.S., with
more combined wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. (Photo: Drew
Angerer/Getty Images, Michael Cohen/Getty Images/The New York Times,
Fortune Live Media/Flickr/cc)]*Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder
Bill Gates, and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett are the three richest
people in the U.S., with more combined wealth than the bottom 50% of the
population. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Michael Cohen/Getty
Images/The New York Times, Fortune Live Media/Flickr/cc)*

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
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/09/massive-triumph-rich-illustrated-by-stunning-new-data/>
what
he called "stunning" findings from Stanford University 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.

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.

 Zucman and fellow economist Emmanuel Saez, his co-author of the new book
"The Triumph of Injustice," provided a chart showing how each group of
earners' take-home pay has changed since 1970. The wealthiest Americans'
assets skyrocketed by millions of dollars even in the first decade of the
21st century—when people in the bottom 50% saw their average take-home
income decrease.

For middle-income earners since 1970, income-plus-effective tax rates have
gone from $44,000 to about $75,000—a greater increase than those in the
bottom 50% of earners, "but still their income growth rate has been very
low," Zucman told the *Post.*

Zucman, who with Saez advised
<https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-unveils-proposal-to-tax-wealth-of-ultra-rich-americans>
Sen.
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on her Ultra-Millionaires Tax, emphasized that
both the explosion of yearly income at the top and the effective tax rates
of people in all income brackets must be taken into account to understand
the massive wealth gap.

"You have two trends reinforcing each other," Zucman told the *Post*.
"There has been the rise in market income inequality—the rise in pretax
income inequality. At the same time, the tax system has become much less
progressive at the top of the income distribution."

"People have this idea that government redistribution has upset some of the
rise in inequality, but essentially that's not the case," the economist
added.

Zucman's findings were revealed two months after *New York Times* columnist
David Leonhardt  published
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/07/maddening-graphic-shows-how-400-richest-americans-paid-less-taxes-any-other-income>a
graphic showing how in 2018, for the first time in U.S. history, the 400
richest Americans paid less in taxes than any other income group.

The richest Americans have benefited from numerous changes to tax laws and
enforcement in recent decades, Sargent wrote, "including domestic and
international tax avoidance, the whittling away of the estate and corporate
taxes, and the repeated downsizing of top marginal rates."

Tony Annett of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia
University wrote that Zucman's research shows how "it is no longer
meaningful to rely on GDP" as a measure of economic well-being, since the
benefits of growth are no longer being shared among all earners as they
were in previous eras.

Seth D. Michaels of the Union of Concerned Scientists described Zucman's
findings as showing how many people of his generation have seen the bulk of
economic growth "captured and concentrated in a few hands."

"The tiny number of people raking in the overwhelming majority of the last
40 years of economic growth are distorting the economy and the political
system like a black hole, everything falling toward their interests at high
speed," Michaels wrote.
<https://twitter.com/sethdmichaels/status/1204056883822243840>

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