Why the Middle-Class is Struggling

The money that used to go to the middle class is going to the really rich:

For the last 15 years, an international consortium of economists has been building data bases on the income shares of the richest people in the developed countries, based on pre-tax market income including capital gains and tax-exempt income, and excluding government transfers. The American data reveals the greatest inequality by far, followed by Great Britain.
The stunning income distribution has a remarkable symmetry.  In 2012, the top 10 percent captured half of all reported income. But the top 1 percent got almost half of that — 22.5 percent — while the top 10th of 1 percent (0.1 percent) captured half of that. All three are within a few decimal places of the previous highs — which occurred in 1928, just before the market crash that ushered in the Great Depression.
The percentages don’t quite capture the violence of the skew.  The stock market implosion of the 1930s followed by World War II’s strict price controls and high marginal taxes brought the top 1 percent’s income share down to about 9 percent by the end of the war.  Executive and financial sector pay was quite restrained, even through the good times of the 1950s and 1960s, and the 1 percent’s income share did not start to rise until the late 1970s. It took off for the stratosphere then — amid the oceans of cash sloshing around Wall Street during the 1980s leveraged buyout boom.
The sums involved are enormous. The difference between the 1 percent’s income share in 1975 (8.9 percent) and today’s 22.5 percent is 13.6 percent. That additional share of personal income is worth $1.6 trillion. Each year.
What can you buy with $1.6 trillion? Well, it’s more than the annual outlays for Social Security payments, and about twice as large as Defense Department appropriations. It’s enough to pay off the federal debt held by the public in about seven years.

Is that money getting trickled-down?  Fuck no, it isn't.  Is it getting invested wisely?  Fuck no, it isn't.  Click through to that link.  That dude has made over a billion dollars a year several times, and he pays a lower tax rate than most middle-class families.  And he buys a $43 million house and tears it down to build a new one.  I believe these folks can pay much higher income taxes.