Why Income Inequality has Skyrocketed in the last 30 years

[Bill USA]

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/16/1204871/why-income-inequality-has-skyrocketed-in-the-last-30-years/

American income inequality has skyrocketed over the last 30 years, as compensation for the wealthiest Americans has grown while wages have stagnated for the middle- and lower-classes. Incomes for the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans are now eight times higher than incomes for the bottom 20 percent, according to a study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The gap between the rich and poor has grown because incomes for the top 20 percent grew at an annual pace that exceeded the total growth of incomes for the bottom 20 percent over a 30 year period.

From the late 1970s until the 2000s, the richest 20 percent of Americans saw their incomes grow by $2,550 a year. By contrast, the bottom 20 percent saw total income growth of just $1,330 over the entire three-decade period the two organizations studied:



Pay for chief executives has risen 127 times faster than worker pay over that three-decade period, according to another recent study. Worker pay has failed to keep up with productivity gains in the workplace, and the minimum wage has failed to keep up with the buying power it once had. Low-wage jobs, meanwhile, are becoming more prevalent, pushing wages for low-income workers down even more. At the same time, tax rates for the wealthy have fallen, and while the wealthy have experienced a solid recovery from the Great Recession, middle- and low-income Americans have largely been left behind.

[naaman fletcher]

1. well,

I think its basically free trade. Simple classical economics would show that free trade leads to greater output, while at the same time inceasing the supply of labor and thus pushing labor prices down.

[AndyTiedye]

3. It Doesn't Have to Be That Way. Free Trade Should be a 2-Way Street

Free trade should still be trade, not just running up our credit line buying stuff from overseas.
If we're also SELLING more stuff overseas, then there should be more work making that stuff.

What passes for "free trade" today isn't.

[HooptieWagon]

4. Exactly!

Free trade merely represents the freedom to move factories to cheaper labor markets and goods to higher selling markets. Labor doesn't have that same freedom. A Chinese worker in a Nike factory can't simply relocate to a better paying job in another country.

[demOcrat11]

2. This is the topic I wish MSM would focus on

instead of all this drama about Benghazi. Income Inequality is the problem. I just get so ill of knowing the fact that the middle class is constantly up for discussion but it okay for the rich to just get richer and the poor gets poorer. I dont know about yall but I just want everything to be FAIR.