But, sadly, you can the gains from 1950 to 1973 where the bottom 99% of the population grew their income relative to the rich has stopped. During the Reagan era, the rich struck back via right wing politics that sold people on "trickle down economics". You can see that from 1886 to 2000 the incomes of the rich grew quickly while the incomes of the bottom 99% stagnated. The rich have now regained the dominance they had in the Gilded Era.
What is hysterically funny to me is that the era from 1980 to now has been sold to the bottom 99% as one supposedly focused on "growing the economy" for their benefit. But what growth there has been has gone almost exclusively into the pockets of the top 1%. But the bottom 99% continue to believe the propaganda they get from the top 1% about the "the govern is the problem not the solution" and the need to "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate" and that if only you are patient long enough great wealth will "trickle down" from the ultra-rich to you. The bottom 99% has been sold on a "winner-take-all" economy.
You can take a peek at a Gilded Age mansion, The Breakers housed some of the Vanderbilts and the Biltmore House housed others.
In the late 1980s to early 1990s you got a sense of the re-emergence of the Gilded Age via the popular TV series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. You can see it in the plush dwelling of financial criminal Bernard Madoff.
2 comments:
RY;
I hate to be redundant, but I see a rise in income for the lower 99% during the years between 73 to a little past 78. This could be my discerning way of looking at those years or my prejudiced way of looking at it, but it amuses me to think that the savior Ronald Reagan began the decline.. I know there were other factors involved..
Thomas: You are right to point out that for the bottom 99% their incomes dropped from around $40K to $36K in 2008 dollars. These are the years of "stagflation". High unemployment meant wages were suppressed. At the same time these were the years of oil embargoes by OPEC so prices rose quickly. Those were tough years, that's why the Reagan message in 1984 of "morning in America" resonated with a lot of people. The dark days of the 1970s were past. I know that the company I was with went bankrupt in 1982 and was saved at the last minute by venture capitalists. So Reagan was skilled as an orator and lucky in choosing to run in 1980. Just like Obama was unlucky in choosing to run in 2008.
What I like about statistics and looking at things over decades is that the glacially slow social changes become evident. The grinding down of the bottom 99% is utterly obvious in that graph. But you could have lived through those years and have an uneasy feeling that "something" was wrong but not put your finger on it.
Sadly, the social conservatives diagnosed the ills as "turning away from God" and not "the loud sucking sound of money being hoovered out of the middle and working classes into the pockets of the ultra-rich". The cosmic joke is that the right wing fanatics among the ultra-rich used the social conservatives to get political power. They kept throwing them a bone over abortion, gay marriage, flag burning, prayer in school, charter schools, etc. They got the social conservatives to vote in politicians who busily reduced taxes for the rich and deregulated government (and destablized the economy leading to the 1990 S&L crisis, the 2000 dot.com crash, and the 2008 Wall Street meltdown), but they delivered precious little to the social conservatives. This is well documented in Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas?.
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