RAND Study Quantifies Staggering U.S. Wealth Inequality
“The top 1% of Americans have taken $50 trillion from the bottom 90%. And as the American economy grows radically unequal it is holding back economic growth itself. The iron rule of market economies is that we all do better when we all do better: when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, and hire more workers. Seventy percent of our economy is dependent on consumer spending; the faster and broader real incomes grow, the stronger the demand for the products and services American businesses produce. This is the virtuous cycle through which workers and businesses prospered together in the decades immediately following World War II. But as wages stagnated after 1975, so too did consumer demand; and as demand slowed, so did the economy.”
