*** “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created. Much of the inequality that exists today is a result of government policy, both what the government does and what it does not do. Government has the power to move money from the top to the bottom and the middle, or vice versa.”
[ Pulitzer Prize winning economist Joseph Siglitz: “The Price Of Inequality” ]
Stiglitz is NOT the only economist to say this. – because. NUMBERS. say this. The May 8, 2026 PBS News Hour: labor’s share of earnings continues down – has reached “a record low” share. And t his: “..the top 10 percent hold two-thirds of total household wealth and are worth an average $8.1 million. The bottom half of households, measured by wealth, hold just 2.5 percent of the total and are worth $60,000 on average.” [ Abha Bhattaral, Rachel Lerman, Federica Cocco: “Millionaires: Not What They Used To Be”; Washington post weekly; 4/26/26 ]
And, of course, NO Trump DICTATORSHIP policies will really help the bottom 80%. We know, knew in 2017, that Trump’s signature tax cut would make things worse, add to the national debt – it did. His “Big Beautiful Bill” is ugly, will make that damage permanent. Soon, YOU will hear cries that “we need” to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Trump’s “Project 2025″ fueled administration is cutting all kinds of government services to YOU to pay for his obscene billionaires’ tax cuts. Second term Trump damage: 66,000 manufacturing jobs lost in the last year.” [5/9/26]
***. “The Betrayal of the American Dream” is the story of how a small number of people in power have deliberately put in place policies that have enriched themselves while cutting the ground out from underneath America’s greatest asset – its middle class…preferential tax law provisions have showered on the wealthy and.. they will hollow out the middle class for years to come…We are no longer the democracy w once were. We have become a plutocracy.”
[ Double Pulitzer Prize winners Donald Barlett and James Steele ]
This post presents excerpts from: “Why †he ‘K-shaped’ economy is not OK” [Edward Lotterman; St. paul Pioneer Press; 4/26/26 ]:
12] “So why the ever-increasing difference in growth between overall output and that of median income received? Because much of the increase in overall household income has been captured by the highest-income 10% of households.”
1] “..the K-shaped economy..refers to an economy that is moving in two different directions for different groups of people…over time, the upper arm of the “K” moves up, the lower down, signifying not only that the rich are getting richer, but their distance from the poor is getting ever greater.”
8] “Good times lasted for 25 years and produced 80 million new citizens, better clothed, better fed and with better health and education than any other time in our nation’s history. There was no K-shape to that economy, virtually everyone was becoming better off.”
***. “In terms of wealth and income, America in the 1950’s and 1960’s was more egalitarian than it had been in more than a century…those same decades were also the high point of social connectedness and civic engagement. Record highs in equality and social capital coincided…Conversely, the last third of the 20th century was a time of growing inequality and eroding social capital…The timing of the two trends is striking: Sometime around 1965-70 America reversed course and started becoming both less economically and less well connected socially and politically.”
[ Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett: “The Spirit Level”. NOTE: this book, an international best-seller, was attacked by Right-wing elements. – because. – it told too much truth ]
9] “In the quarter century from 1950 to 1975, output of the U.S. economy grew by 3.8% a year. In contrast, in the most recent quarter-century, that from 2000 to 2025, output growth did not make 2.2% a year. That difference…is huge. The U.S. economy in 1975 was 2.54 times as large as it had been in 1950. In contrast, the economy in 2025 was only 1.7 times larger…”
10] “..if the U.S. economy had grown as fast under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden as it had under Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, inflation-adjusted GDP would be $38.8 trillion, not $23.8 trillion. That 63% greater total would have amounted to over $43,000 greater available goods and services to every man, woman and child in our population of 349 million people.”
11] “..inflation-adjusted per capita GDP grew by 72% from 1985 to 2015. But inflation-adjusted median household income – that received right at the middle of all households from lowest to highest income. – only grew by 25%…working people are not reaping the financial benefits that their own labor is producing.”
***. “During the 20th century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both kore fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. Incomes rose in sync. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests.’ [ Kurt Andersen: “Evil Geniuses” ]
2] “..higher-educated, higher-income households that, on average, include cohorts of people, especially the baby boomers born from 1946 through 1964…they have had it better than any other birth cohort in U.S. history.”
3] “Boomers’ adult children are not doing as well as their parents and their adult grandchildren even worse. In relative terms, they have lower incomes and lower net worth than their boomer forebears did at the same age. It is harder for them to find work and much harder to rent or buy shelter. Basic medical care and insurance coverage chew up a larger fraction of earnings than in the past……..general inflation…..Student loans….”
4] “and the worst is yet to come. There are a few general issues that determine how well any certain birth cohort does over their lifespans: First, how productive is the overall economy…..Second, how is total income..actually divided up?…. Third, do circumstances arise that..impose greater costs…. Fourth, are the relevant factors “cyclical” or ‘structural”? ‘
*** “From the end of World War II through the 1970s..average incomes..of the bottom 50 percent of earners rose by 129 percent…During the same three-plus decades, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose ..about 58 percent. And the gap between the two groups was narrower than it was before or afterward. After 1980..growth for the bottom 50 percent of earners cratered, totaling a mere 21 percent over the next thirty-five years, while the incomes of the top 1 percent of earners nearly tripled [194 percent].” [ Sarah Chayes: “On corruption In America” ]
5]. “The economy bobbled repeatedly from 1920 to 1940. The twenties roared in some industries…The generation of sailors and doughboys had the deck stacked against them….after the stock market crash starting in 1929, the whole country and world were in depression.’
6]. “The economy boomed during World War II. but fears of returning to depression because of returning military forces..were common. This motivated passage of the GI Bill to keep many vets out of the labor market by sending them to school…our status as the one undamaged industrialized nation in the whole world combined with productivity boosts from millions of better-educated veterans and from defense-oriented technological research stoked a fire under the economy.”
7] “G>I> Bill mortgages jump-started homebuilding. Constructing thousands of miles of highways modeled on Germany’s autobahns, together with thousands of new hospitals with delivery rooms for babies, and tens of thousands of grade schools, high schools and universities plus technological advances in agriculture, all shifted our nation into boom gear.”
***. “…years-long assault by Republicans on the Internal Revenue Service.’ Bush II hired private contractors, who ‘..ended up costing the federal government money.” Republicans then ‘slashed 20% of the IRS’s budget and 22% of its staff from 2010 to 2018. For people making more than $1 million, the number of tax audits dropped by 72% – and the money the IRS collects from audits fell by 40% Biden’s new IRS commissioner..told Congress the agency is leaving on the table $1 trillion a year in uncollected taxes because it doesn’t have enough staff.” [ Washington monthly; July-August, 2021 ]
[ “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.” ]
With Justice For All 