As of March 26, we're $27,100 in the red for the quarter. Donate here to support this vital work
Subscribe here and join over 13,000 subscribers to our free weekly newsletter

The One Percent Have Gotten $21 Trillion Richer Since 1989. The Bottom 50% Have Gotten Poorer.
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Magazine


New York Magazine, June 16, 2019
Posted: June 23rd, 2019
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/the-fed-just-released...

Some Democratic presidential candidates say that Americas economic system is badly broken and in need of sweeping, structural change. In its new Distributive Financial Accounts data series, the central bank offers a granular picture of how American capitalism has been distributing the gains of economic growth over the past three decades. Matt Bruenig of the Peoples Policy Project took the Feds data and calculated how much the respective net worth of Americas top one percent and its bottom 50 percent has changed since 1989. He found that Americas superrich have grown about $21 trillion richer ... while those in the bottom half of the wealth distribution have grown $900 billion poorer. Notably, this measure of wealth includes liabilities. And it does not include consumer goods. But if one did include the Feds data on the distribution of consumer goods, the wealth gap between the top one percent and bottom 50 would actually be even larger. In 2011, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University published a study on Americans views of how wealth was distributed in their society, and how they felt it should be distributed. They found that, in the average Americans ideal world, the richest 20 percent would own 32 percent of national wealth. In reality, the top quintile owned 84 percent as of 2011. And that share has grown in the intervening years. Today, the one percent alone commands roughly 40 percent of all Americas wealth.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.


Latest News


Key News Articles from Years Past