Emmanuel Saez

America’s Economic Dark Side

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Steve Lendman October 21 2013

Economic inequality

Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich explained, saying:

“Of all developed nations, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income, and we’re surging towards every greater inequality.”

America’s 400 richest elites have more wealth than half the population. Jacob Kornbluth’s new documentary film “Inequality for All” examines disturbing truths.

US inequality is at historic highs. Since 1970, America’s economy doubled. The top 1% benefitted hugely. They earn more than 20% of national income. It’s triple their 1970 percentage.

The gap between rich and all others keeps widening. Inequality hurts everyone, says Reich. Since economic recovery began in 2009, America’s top 1% got 95% of the gains.

Adjusted for inflation, median household income keeps declining. Where will most people “get the money they need to keep the economy going,” asked Reich?

“We’re the richest economy in the history of the world. For the majority of Americans not to get the benefits of this extraordinarily prosperous economy, you know, there’s something fundamentally wrong.”

America has less upward mobility than any other developed country. If you’re poor, you’ll stay that way.

If you’re lower middle class, “the cards are going to be stacked against you. You will probably never get anywhere,” says Reich.

“Who is actually looking out for the American worker? The answer is nobody.”

The nation is headed toward becoming a “100 percent plutocracy.” Inequality this extreme fuels public anger. It hurts economic growth. Force-fed austerity assures worse ahead.

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A Growing Disparity Between The Very Very Rich & Everyone Else

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By John Schmitt | Nation Of Change
October 23 2011

Economic inequalityEconomic inequality has been growing steadily for three decades. According to the most definitive data, assembled by economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, the top 1 percent received 10 percent of all U.S. income in 1979. By 2007, just before the Great Recession, that share had risen to 23 percent.

What most Americans don’t know, however, is that before the late 1970s, inequality had been falling for five decades. The Golden Age of capitalism — the 30 years from the end of World War II through the mid-1970s, when gross domestic product, wages and incomes grew faster than at any comparable period in American history — was marked not by financial excesses and widening inequality, but by equalizing growth and broadly shared prosperity.

Of course, not every Occupy Wall Street protester has reviewed the hard data. But the thread running through the range of grievances voiced at occupations around the country is anger over high and rising inequality.

Few measures would help the long-term health of the economy more than reducing the economic and political clout of Wall Street. The financial sector exists to connect savers with investors and to do so at the lowest feasible cost and risk. In a sensible world, we would view the financial sector as nothing more than a transactions cost to be minimized along the way to producing the goods and services that the economy is really about.

For all the counter-culture on display, Occupy Wall Street is pushing us exactly in this sensible direction.

Published originally by Nation Of Change | All rights reserved.

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