This:
Because the pre-tax incomes of the bottom
50 percent stagnated while average national income per adult grew, the
share of national income earned by the bottom 50 percent collapsed from
20 percent in 1980 to 12.5 percent in 2014. Over the same period, the
share of incomes going to the top 1 percent surged from 10.7 percent in
1980 to 20.2 percent in 2014.
As shown in Figure 2, these two income groups basically switched their
income shares, with about 8 points of national income transferred from
the bottom 50 percent to the top 1 percent. The gains made by the 1
percent would be large enough to fully compensate for the loss of the
bottom 50 percent, a group 50 times larger.
To understand how unequal the United
States is today, consider the following fact. In 1980, adults in the top
1 percent earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50 percent of
adults. Today they earn 81 times more. This ratio of 1 to 81 is similar
to the gap between the average income in the United States and the
average income in the world’s poorest countries, among them the war-torn
Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and
Burundi. Another alarming trend evident in this data is that the
increase in income concentration at the top in the United States over
the past 15 years is due to a boom in capital income. It looks like the
working rich who drove the upsurge in income concentration in the 1980s
and 1990s are either retiring to live off their capital income or
passing their fortunes onto heirs.
Trump's policies are just going to worsen these trends. He can jawbone companies into keeping some decent paying jobs in the States, but overall, there is downward pressure on the middle class, and messing with Medicare and cutting taxes for rich people aren't going to change that. Even decent paying public sector jobs are getting
squeezed out, and the Republicans elected with Trump are all for strangling them further:
Back in 2009, Rick Erickson was happy
with his job as a teacher in one of the state’s northernmost school
districts on the shores of Lake Superior. He made $35,770 a year
teaching chemistry and physics, which wasn’t a lot of money, but then
again, he received stellar healthcare and pension benefits, and could
talk honestly with administrators about what he needed as a teacher
every two years when his union sat down with the school district in
collective bargaining sessions.
Then, five years ago, Wisconsin passed Act 10, also known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,
which dramatically limited the ability of teachers and other public
employees to bargain with employers on wages, benefits, and working
conditions. After Act 10, Erickson saw his take-home pay drop
dramatically: He now makes $30,650. His wife is a teacher, too, and
together they make 11 percent less than they did before Act 10. The
local union he once led no longer exists, and so he can’t bargain with
the school district for things like prep time and sick days. He pays
more for health care and his pension, and he says both he and his wife
may now not be able to retire until they are much older than they had
planned....Data suggests that Erickson is by no means unique. Total teacher
compensation in Wisconsin has dropped 8 percent, or $6,500 since Act 10,
according to an extensive study
by Andrew Litten, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan who
used state data showing compensation of all teachers in the state of
Wisconsin. What’s more, he found that the most experienced and
highest-paid teachers experienced the biggest reduction in benefits.
This will continue, and voters will continue to be mad. Trump won't solve anything.
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