middle class gets limited to no real wage increase, meanwhile, Wall Streets gets record buybacks! pic.twitter.com/Auck3xC7Fq
— Alastair Williamson (@StockBoardAsset) August 7, 2018
SHARE OF HOUSEHOLDS IN THE #MIDDLECLASS VS THE #POPULISM INDEX
Something is broken again pic.twitter.com/noVYKfugdX
— OW (@OccupyWisdom) August 7, 2018
via marketwatch:
The gap between the rich and the poor in America has ballooned over the last several decades.
In 2015, the top 1% of Americans made 26.3 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent — an increase from 2013, when they earned 25.3 times as much, according to a recent study released by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C. think tank.
A family needed an annual income of $421,926 to be part of the 1% nationally, the study said, but in some states the threshold was higher. The top 1% of Americans took home more than 22% of all income in 2015, the study found. That’s the highest share since a peak of 23.9% just before the Great Depression in 1928.
On Wednesday, Amazon AMZN, +0.05% founder Jeff Bezos became the richest person of the modern era as his wealth surpassed $150 billion.
The fortunes of people like Bezos and those made on Wall Street, in Hollywood and Silicon Valley fuel much of wealth inequality in the U.S., but the issue affects most of the country, the report showed. The incomes of the top 1% grew faster than the bottom 99% in 43 states between 2009 and 2015. In nine states in the U.S., the top 1% represents more than half of all income growth.