The decline of our country is explicit. While 99% of our population is struggling to adapt to the rising cost of basic necessities, the top 1% of ultra rich Americans has seen their wealth increase by nearly 500% over the past four years.
Though an America where some have more money than others is nothing new, in the past generation, the financial gap between the elites and everyone else has become obscene.
Economists are convinced that something has gone awry in our economic system, threatening the underpinning of the American Dream. They say we’re living a tale of “two Americas”, divided between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office exposes that income inequality in the United States has never been worse. Even though Americans are working harder than ever before, they are earning less when accounting the current cost of housing, food, energy, healthcare, and other essentials.
The bottom 20% of U.S. households earns an average income before taxes and transfers of just $21,900 while the top 20% earns more than $400,000 a year.
What’s more, the top 1% of households made almost five times as much income as the rest of the population from 2020 to now.
Data released by the Pew Research Center shows that the top 10% of households have over $6.7 million in wealth. At the same time, the bottom 50% of households have just $50,000 in wealth. As a group, the top 10% holds 66.9% of the nation’s household wealth. In contrast, the bottom 50% only holds 2.5%.
Today, the concentration of income toward the ultra rich is at its highest point since 1980.
In fact, over the past four decades, average incomes grew by 135% for upper-class Americans, but just 38% and 23% for middle and low-income Americans, respectively.
Although the latter income brackets account for more than 60% of the nation’s consumption, their purchasing power is getting significantly lower.