Major Causes: Unemployment, Low Wages, and Disproportionate Rewards for the Few
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. — Franklin Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, January 1937. “Put simply, at least half and possibly more of your income is determined by where you live, which for 96 per cent of people in the world is where they were born. Then, about 20 per cent is due to the income level of your parents. So, your citizenship plus your parental background explain around 70-80 per cent of your income. Obviously, if I had data for gender, race, ethnicity and other things that are similarly ‘given’ to an individual at birth, that percentage would go up.” Milanovic, Forbes 3/18
Income Inequality: growing. Income Inequality Wage Inequality Racial Income Inequality CEO-Worker Pay Gaps
Source: https://www.epi.org/multimedia/unequal-states-of-america/
And inequality has only worsened: Top 1% share 2015, Q2:31.1%; share Q1 2022: 41.9%
Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1300500
“How much would you have to earn per hour to amass the fortune [of] Elon Musk, the world’s richest man: $1,871,794 every 60 minutes. ‘Almost two million dollars per hour. Every working hour for 45 years.” Robeyns, Limitarianism, quoted by Must We Limit the Wealthy’s Wealth?
Racial and ethnic disparities in the United StatesAn interactive chartbook, EPI
Inequality in annual earnings worsens in 2021Top 1% of earners get a larger share of the earnings pie while the bottom 90% lose ground, Gould & Kandra,EPI 12/22
When We Keep Giving Money to Rich People, Why Are We Surprised by Inequality? Baker, CEPR 6/21
The United States of Inequality: A Timeline,, Kingsley, Capital & Main, 11/19
Nobel Economist Says Inequality is Destroying Democratic Capitalism, Deaton, Evonomics 7/19
Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class, OECD 4/19
Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, ITEP 10/18
Family Budget Calculator Eco. Policy Institute
Eight Reasons Why Inequality Ruins the Economy, Dillow, Evonomics 5/19
The Highest-Paid C.E.O.s of 2018: A Year So Lucrative, We Had to Redraw Our Chart, Russell & Williams, NYTimes, 5/19 See ratio of CEO pay to that of median employee
The decline of African-American and Hispanic wealth since the Great Recession, Wolff, 12/18
World’s billionaires became 20% richer in 2017, Neate, Guardian 10/18
“shareholder value is the root cause of workers’ stagnant salaries” How shareholder profits conquered capitalism – and how workers can win back its benefits for themselves, Brennan, Conversation, 10/18
Economic justice goes a long way toward improving mental health up and down the socioeconomic ladder, Green, Yes! 9/18
Where in the World Is It Easiest to Get Rich? Why Scandinavia is a better place to fulfill the American dream, Eia, Evonomics
The Enemy Between Us: How Inequality Erodes Our Mental Health, Pickett & Wilkinson, Open Democracy 8/18
How the Dominant Business Paradigm Turns Nice People into Psychopaths, Stout, Evonomics 7/18
America’s White Collar Middle Class Takes a Terrifying Slide Down the Mobility Ladder, Parramore, INET, 7/18
Five Powerful Families: We’ve reached the point where a handful of extraordinarily wealthy clans essentially have the power to suffocate our democracy. Lord, IPS 7/18
Why America is the World’s First Poor Rich Country, Haque, Eudaimonia 6/18
Want to Make Money Like a C.E.O.? Work for 275 Years, Gelles, NYT 5/18
“In the United States, the chances of acceding to higher education are almost entirely determined by the income of one’s parents; barely 20% for the poorest 10%, and over 90% for the richest 10%.” Piketty blog, 2/18
Why Equality Matters More Than Income, Gershon, JSTOR 2/18 “…high levels of income inequality were correlated with higher rates of infant mortality and low birthweight, teen pregnancy, overweight children, bullying, low math scores, less pursuit of higher education, and a lower proportion of kids who said their “peers are kind.” More equality did have a couple of apparent downsides—in more equal societies, more kids reported feeling lonely, and children were more likely to “aspire to less skilled work.” (The link between equality and loneliness seemed… due to Japan, …with high levels of equality, but also a lot of lonely kids.)”
Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2017, Census, 9/18
Current Population Survey, Bur. of the Census, 8/17
Mass Incarceration: New Jim Crow, Class War, or Both?, Lewis, PPP 1/18
Latina workers make 67 cents for every dollar white men make, EPI 11/17
Latest official estimates underreport extent of inequality in the U.S., Boushey & Clemons, Equitable Growth 9/17
Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Changing the Story of Inequality
How Did They Get So Rich? The massive increase in incomes at the top is driven mostly by capital. Bruenig Jacobin 8/17
Yes, Your Parents’ Status Does Influence Your Earning Power, Heath, Bloomberg 6/17
The Absurd Amount of Entitlements That Go to Rich People, Buchheit Commondreams 5/17
Tax Evasion and Inequality, Zucman et al 5/17
A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America, Gross, NPR 5/17 The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Rothstein, EPI
The Rich Are Living Longer and Taking More From Taxpayers, Steverman,Bloomberg 4/17
America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People, Parramore, INET 4/17
The Big Reason Whites Are Richer Than Blacks in America Inheritance matters a lot more than previously thought Coy, Bloomberg 2/17
Income share for the bottom 50% of Americans is ‘collapsing,’ new Piketty research finds, Goldstein 2/17, Marketwatch Increased health care spending on the elderly consumes most of the [income] gains. The effects of government assistance vary widely with age, especially within the lower half of incomes. Younger adults between 20 and 45 years old have seen their after-tax incomes flatline. But over the same period, seniors in the bottom half have seen their after-tax incomes grow by over 70 percent. The bulk of that gain represents increased health care spending through Medicare. Piketty et al, NYTimes 12/16
Explaining inequality:Is technological progress behind growing income inequality? Darvas, Bruegel 12/16
Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer, D. Baker 10/16 free
Striking new research on inequality: ‘Whatever you thought, it’s worse’ Swanson, Wash. P.
Income gains in 2015 don’t reverse long-run trend toward greater inequality, Gould, EPI 9/16
Neoliberal epidemics: How inequality makes us sick, Schrecker, SHP 8/16
“Inequality made the Great Recession worse (especially for the poor),” Mitman et al, VoxEu 8/16 [see their table on share of income spent by wealth quintile]
Invisible Inequality: The Two Americas of Military Sacrifice, 8/16
Why inequality is worse for your wallet than a weak economy, Review of Blivens, Tankersley, Wash. Post, 6/16
A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality [rev.], 7/15/15 Stone et al, CBPP
Mr. Moneybags Gets More Out of Social Security, Irwin, NYT 4/16
