GOP-Style Growth Of Wealth

The Republicans claim they have the answer to this country's economic problems. Unfortunately, that answer is the same old trickle-down economics that put this country in the current economic mess to begin with. The charts above (from Think Progress) show just what that policy has done to the people of this country in the last 30 years.

The top chart shows the ratio of the wealth of the 1% to the country's median wealth. In 1962, the richest 1% had about 125 times the median wealth in the United States. Even as late as 1983, the wealth of the top 1% was only 131 times the median wealth. That's a fairly large ratio, but not out of line with the wealthy in other developed countries. But as the trickle-down policies began to take effect, the wealth of the richest 1% began to grow rapidly -- and by 2010, it had more than doubled the 1983 rate (and now stood at 288 times the country's median wealth).

Now this might not have been so bad if the wealth of all other Americans had also doubled -- and the Republicans would like for you to believe that (that the trickle-down policy worked for all Americans). But it didn't happen. The trickle-down Republican policies only worked to make the rich much richer, as the bottom chart clearly shows.

In fact, the bottom three quintiles (bottom 60%) of the population actually lost some wealth, instead of sharing in the nation's growth of wealth. And the fourth quintile (60 - 80% group) only had a growth in wealth of 4.3%. All of the rest of the country's growth in wealth went to the top quintile (80 - 100% group), and 74.2% of the growth went to the richest 5% of Americans (with 38.3% going to the top 1%).

That is what the Republicans' trickle-down policy has done to this country -- and that is the same policy that they are still touting. That policy directed nearly all of the country's wealth to the richest quintile, while hurting everyone else -- and it is causing a shrinkage of the middle class, as many are dropping below middle class status . Is there any reason to believe that failed policy will work better under Romney than it did under George Bush?