Inside Our Profoundly Unequal ‘New Normal’

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


Inside Our Profoundly Unequal ‘New Normal’
AUGUST 2, 2014

Wealth’s current tilt to the top sometimes seems almost eternal. But can our economy ‘self-correct’? A provocative new paper out of the developed world’s official research agency contemplates our tomorrow.

By Sam Pizzigati


The Commerce Department released some revised figures on America’s economy last week. Previous numbers, Commerce researchers noted, had overestimated the share of the nation’s income going to workers and underestimated the share going to America’s asset-rich.

“Everything’s coming up roses for people who own a chunk of American capital,” observed Brookings Institution economist Gary Burtless after the new stats emerged. “What we’ve seen in the economic recovery is inequality on steroids. The market is giving wealthy people a very good run.”

That “very good run” has actually been lasting a very long time. Since 1982, the income share of America’s top 1 percent has more than doubled, from 10.8 percent in 1982 to 22.5 percent in 2012.

Americans down below those top 1 percent heights, meanwhile, haven’t been on much of a run at all. They’ve been falling. The wealth of the typical American household has dropped nearly 20 percent since 1984, says a new Russell Sage Foundation study.

As of June 2014, adds a new analysis of private sector wages, average American worker real wages have dipped 16.2 percent since 1972, their record high point. .............(more)

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