The Wealth/Income Gap Is Wide - And Growing Much Wider Under Trump/Republicans

 The following is part of an article by Shannon Pettypiece at NBC News:

How’s the economy?

Not bad if you’re rich.

Demand for luxury yachts and private jets is surging thanks to last year’s tax law. Sales of $10 million-plus mansions are booming as stocks hit new highs. And the wealthy and powerful will get to enjoy a new ballroom for galas at the White House.

What if you aren’t rich?

The typical American can’t afford the median-priced home. A new car is out of reach for many, with the average monthly payment exceeding $700. Food banks are seeing a growing number of people skipping meals because they can’t afford groceries, and more middle-class Americans are selling their plasma to make ends meet.

The divide between rich and poor in America is the widest it’s been in at least a generation — and growing. The amount of wealth held by the top 1% increased at more than double the rate of the bottom 90% in the first nine months of last year, according to Federal Reserve figures. At the very top, Elon Musk’s fortune is approaching that of legendary 19th-century businessman John D. Rockefeller when looked at as a share of the overall U.S. economy.

A variety of factors have shaped the struggles of everyday Americans and fueled the gains of the wealthy: The pandemic disrupted the housing market, making it harder to afford a home. Stocks have surged, driven by enthusiasm over AI. Manufacturing has waned, hiring has slipped and costs continue to rise.

President Donald Trump’s policies are amplifying these trends. One year into his second term, his administration has cut programshelping lower-income households while advancing policies benefiting the wealthy and corporations. He’s signed legislation to cut food stamps and Medicaid benefits and put new restrictions on low-income housing assistance and student loans. To cope with higher costs from tariffs, he has suggested Americans buy fewer dolls for their children.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has given billions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy and loosened regulations on banks while easing rules around cryptocurrency, which he’s benefited from personally. . . .

What’s clear is that the divide between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else has been growing for decades — and shows no sign of slowing. The ramifications of Trump’s policies widening this divide could go beyond Americans’ bank accounts, shaping the political landscape ahead of November’s midterm elections, with multiple polls showing a growing number of voters disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy.

For many people, these trends are shaking a core belief: that it is possible to get ahead in America. . . .

Americans born in the 1980s were less likely to earn more than their parents, compared with those born in the 1940s, a 2016 study by Stanford University economists found. Today’s households are also facing higher costs, including spiking health care premiums and deductibles, as well as child care expenses.

These struggles are not equally felt. As of last October, the top 1% held 32% of America’s wealth, up from about 23% in 1990. The wealth held by white households far outstrips that of Black and Hispanic households.

Slowing wage gains have contributed to the widening gap between rich and poor. Since 1979, wages for the bottom 90% of earners have increased 44%, while wages for the top 1% of earners have risen more than 180%, a 2024 report from the Economic Policy Institute found. . . .

The Trump administration’s regulatory cuts, along with tax breaks for corporations in last year’s tax law, sent stocks to record highs last year. Those heavily invested in technology companies are gaining the most — just seven tech companies, including Amazon and Meta, were responsible for 40% of the gains last year in the S&P 500.

While most Americans have some investment in the stock market, a disproportionate share of gains have gone to the wealthy, with the richest 10% of households owning around 90% of all stocks, according to Federal Reserve data.

Those same households were responsible for around half of all consumer spending in 2025, the highest rate since at least 1989, according to Moody’s Analytics. Wealthy households also buoyed the housing market and new car sales over the past year. Walmart said last month that most of its growth was coming from households making more than $100,000. . . .

Among the ways Trump has affected Americans’ bottom line is through his tariffs, which have driven up retail prices, said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who worked in the George W. Bush administration. Higher prices disproportionately affect those with less disposable income to absorb price hikes. . . .

The slowing job market is putting significant pressure on households. Wages aren’t rising as quickly as in recent years, and employers have pulled back on hiring. The U.S. added just 584,000 jobs in 2025, the worst year for hiring since Covid. And most of the growth was driven by a handful of industries, like health care and education.

Americans Are Upset With Economic Unfairness And Power Of The Rich

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between October 31st and November 3rd of a nationwide sample of 1,656 adults (including 1,475 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.

Public Overwhelmingly Believes Gap Between Rich And Poor Is Getting Worse

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between October 4th and 6th of a nationwide sample of 1,648 adults (including 1,490 registered voters). The Margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.

The Economy Is Great For The Rich But Not For Most Others

Al indicators show the American economy is doing very well. Inflation is down, unemployment remains very low, the Gross Domestic Product is high, the Stock Market is nearing an all-time high, and sales are brisk in this holiday season.

But poll after poll has shown that a significant majority of Americans say the economy is bad. Why the disconnect? Are U.S. citizens just too ignorant to recognize a good economy? Not at all!

The truth is that the economy has reached an epic stage of unfairness. The economy is good for the rich, and great for the super-rich. But the bottom 90% is not feeling the benefits of the good economy. They still struggle with even the low inflation. They have trouble with rising child care and medical/drug costs. And their salaries are not keeping pace.

The real problem is not a bad economy, but an unfair economy -- an economy that only benefits the rich. The gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90% has grown enormous -- surpassing the unfairness of the pre-Depression Gilded Age.

Rep. Ro Khanna is right. It is a mistake for Democrats to just try to convince Americans that they are wrong about the economy. They know better. Instead, Democrats must recognize the unfairness of the economy, and convince voters that they have solutions for that unfairness. If they don't, then voters will do what they normally do in a bad economic situation -- punish the party that occupies the White House.

That would be a mistake, because it's the Republicans that have created the unfairness with their "trickle-down" economic policy -- a policy that promised everyone would benefit from policies that gave more money to the rich. They said it would trickle down and make life better for everyone, but that did not happen. The rich got richer, but no one else benefitted.

Democrats must convince voters that they can make life better for the bottom 90%. And they do have solutions that would do that. 

* They would raise the minimum wage above the current poverty wage (putting upward pressure on all wages). 

* They would save Social Security and Medicare by fully funding them -- not cutting them as Republicans want to do.

* They would help working families by helping to pay child care costs.

* They would make it even easier for Americans to get and keep heal insurance.

* They would make sure the rich pay their fair share of taxes, while refusing to raise taxes on the middle and working classes.

* They would fight the monopolization of businesses, which allows unfair price-gouging.

There are solutions to the unfairness of the U.S. economy, but Democrats must convince the voting public that they have the solutions. If they don't, they could lost in 2024, and that would just make things worse for most Americans -- because the Republicans are still invested in their "trickle-down" version of economics.

Democrats would be making a mistake to just boast about a good economy. They must convince voters they could make the economy fairer and better for everyone.  

GOP Policies Are Causing A Growing Economic Inequality

Since about 1980, there has been an increasing economic inequality between the top 1% and the bottom 90% of Americans. It has now grown so large that it exceeds the economic inequality that existed right before the Great Depression -- and it continues to grow worse. This is no accident. It is the intentional result of Republican "trickle-down" economic policies that tilted the economic playing field to benefit the rich at the expense of most Americans.

Elise Gould and Jori Sandra of the Economic Policy Institute have written an excellent article about this (and I recommend reading the whole article). Here is their conclusion: 

The level of earnings inequality that existed in 1979 could have simply continued through to today. Instead, we have seen a growing concentration of earnings at the top and the very top of the earnings distribution, while the bottom 90% has experienced meager gains. Wages for the top 1% grew more than seven times fast as wages for the bottom 90% between 1979 and 2021. The top 1% now amasses a record share of total earnings, while the bottom 90% share of earnings has hit a historic low.

This slow progress for the vast majority of workers reaffirms the need to place robust wage growth and worker power at the center of economic policymaking. Over the last four decades, a series of policies have reduced the leverage of most workers to achieve faster wage growth (Mishel and Bivens 2021). Such policies include:

• tolerating (or even encouraging) excessive unemployment
• failing to routinely raise the federal minimum wage to protect workers’ purchasing power
• writing the rules of globalization to let employers use them as a tool for wage suppression
• withering of labor standards, like the overtime threshold governing how many workers are entitled to higher pay for longer hours
• lack of enforcement against wage theft
• allowing discrimination based on gender, race, and ethnicity
• new employer-mandated agreements that reduce worker bargaining power, such as noncompetes and mandatory arbitration of grievances
• fissuring of the workplace and supply-chain dominance
• sharp cuts in marginal tax rates, deregulation, and loose corporate governance oversight, which led to explosions in executive and financial-sector pay

Most critically, current labor law does not adequately protect workers’ right to form unions. With the possible exception of excess unemployment, declining union membership plays the single most significant role in slow and unequal wage growth (Mishel and Bivens 2021). This erosion was not driven by workers’ declining interest in unions, but rather by concerted employer opposition, along with state and federal policy that has made it nearly impossible for workers to form unions in the face of unwilling employers (Rosenfeld, Denice, and Laird 2016; McNicholas et al. 2019).

To stem inequality and see healthy wage growth for the vast majority of workers, we need to use all the tools in our toolbox to reverse these policy trends—including prioritizing full employment, strengthening and enforcing labor standards, and removing obstacles to workers forming unions.

The Huge Wage Gap Continues To Grow Even Larger

The United States used to have a fair economy, where productivity increases were shared among all classes. But since the Republicans seized control of our government about 1980, they changed the economic rules. Now the rich hog most of the increase in production -- resulting in massive income increases for the rich, while workers struggle to just stay up with inflation.

Here is part of a recent report on this from the Economic Policy Institute:

Newly available wage data from the Social Security Administration allow us to analyze wage trends for the top 1.0% and other very high earners as well as for the bottom 90% during 2020. The upward distribution of wages from the bottom 90% to the top 1.0% that was evident over the period from 1979 to 2019 was especially strong in the 2020 pandemic year, yielding historically high wage levels and shares of all wages for the top 1.0% and 0.1%. Correspondingly, the share of wages earned by the bottom 95% fell in 2020.

Two features of the pandemic economy distorted wage patterns in 2020 and led to faster wage growth, especially at the top. One feature was that inflation grew at a subdued 1.2% rate, boosting the average real wage (but not affecting distribution). A second feature was that, as employment fell (the number of earners fell by 1.7 million, or 1.6%) and unemployment rose (to 8.1%), the composition of the workforce changed. Specifically, job losses were heaviest for lower wage workers so the mix of jobs shifted toward higher paying ones, artificially boosting average wages (see Gould) and generating faster measured wage growth especially in the bottom half.

For last year, the data show annual wages rising fastest for those in the top 1.0% (up 7.3%) and top 0.1% (up 9.9%) while those in the bottom 90% saw wages grow by just 1.7%.

This continuous growth of wage inequality undercuts wage growth for the bottom 90% and reaffirms the need to place generating robust wage growth for the vast majority and rebuilding worker power at the center of economic policymaking. See Mishel and Bivens (2021) for the evidence that an erosion of worker power due to excessive unemployment, eroded collective bargaining, corporate-driven globalization, weaker labor standards, new employer-mandated agreements (such as noncompetes), and supply-chain dominance explains wage suppression and wage inequality growth.

As Figure A shows, the top 1.0% and 0.1% were the clear winners over the 1979–2020 period:

• The top 1.0% saw their wages grow by 179.3%.
• Wages for the top 0.1% grew more than twice as fast, up a spectacular 389.1%.
• The other segments of the top 10% also had faster-than-average wage growth since 1979, up 53.9% and 83.1%, but nowhere near as fast as the wage growth at the top.
• In contrast, those in the bottom 90% had annual wages grow by 28.2% from 1979 to 2020.

This disparity in wage growth reflects a sharp long-term rise in the share of total wages earned by those at the very top: the top 1.0% earned 13.8% of all wages in 2020, up from 7.3% in 1979. That marks the second highest share of earnings for the top 1.0% since the earliest year, 1937, when data became available (matching the tech bubble share of 13.8% in 2000 and below the share of 14.1% in 2007). The share of wages for the bottom 90% fell from 69.8% in 1979 to just 60.2% in 2020.

Huge Income/Wealth Gap Is Our Nation's Biggest Problem

 

Prior to the 1980's, the rich did very well, but so did other Americans. That's because the rising productivity was shared among all groups. The rich got their share, workers got their share through rising wages, and the poor benefitted through government programs.

But when the Republicans gained enough power around 1980, they changed economic policy to the benefit of the rich and the detriment of everyone else. Their economic theory (commonly called the "trickle-down theory) stated that by giving more to the rich, everyone would benefit.

That did not happen. The rich gobbled up most of the rising productiviy, giving them enormous profits, while workers wages were virtually stagnant, and the poor suffered through program cuts. This policy created a huge (and growing) gap in income and wealth between the rich and everyone else -- a gap larger than it's been in about a century. 

The last time the gap was this big, it resulted in the Great Depression. Unless we fix this by instituting a fairer economic policy, we will likely experience that same economic devastation.

Here is what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has to say about this growing problem on his own website:

Policymakers and the media are paying too much attention to how quickly the U.S. economy will emerge from the pandemic-induced recession, and not nearly enough to the nation’s deeper structural problem – the increasing imbalance of wealth that could enfeeble the economy for years. 

Seventy percent of the US economy depends on consumer spending. But wealthy people, who now own more of the economy than at any time since the 1920s, spend only a small percentage of their incomes. Lower-income people, who were in trouble even before the pandemic, spend whatever they have – which has become very little.  

In a very practical sense, the U.S. economy depends on the spending of most Americans who don’t have much to spend. That spells trouble ahead. 

It’s not simply a matter of an adequate “stimulus.” The $2,000 checks contained in the American Rescue Plan have already been distributed and extra unemployment benefits will soon expire. Consumer spending will be propped up as employers add to their payrolls. Biden’s spending plans, if enacted, will also help keep consumers afloat for a time. 

But the underlying imbalance will remain. Most peoples’ wages will still be too low and too much of the economy’s gains will continue to accumulate at the top, for total consumer demand to be adequate.  

Years ago, Marriner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1934 to 1948, explained that the Great Depression occurred because the buying power of Americans fell far short of what the economy could produce. He blamed the increasing concentration of wealth at the top. In his words:

“A giant suction pump had by 1929-1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. As in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.” 

The wealthy of the 1920s didn’t know what to do with all their money, while most Americans could maintain their standard of living only by going into debt. When that debt bubble burst, the economy sunk. 

History is repeating itself. The typical Americans’ wages have hardly increased for decades, adjusted for inflation. Most economic gains have gone to the top, just as Eccles’s “giant suction pump” drew an increasing portion of the nation’s wealth into a few hands before the Great Depression. 

The result has been consumer spending financed by borrowing, creating chronic fragility. After the housing and financial bubbles burst in 2008, we avoided another Great Depression only because the government pumped enough money into the system to maintain demand, and the Fed kept interest rates near zero. Then came the pandemic. 

The wealth imbalance is now more extreme than it’s been in over a century. There’s so much wealth at the top that the prices of luxury items of all kinds are soaring; so-called “non-fungible tokens,” ranging from art and music to tacos and toilet paper, are selling like 17th-century exotic Dutch tulips; cryptocurrencies have taken off; and stock market values have continued to rise even through the pandemic.  

Corporations don’t know what to do with all their cash. Trillions of dollars are sitting idle on their balance sheets. The biggest firms have been feasting off the Fed’s corporate welfare, as the central bank obligingly holds corporate bonds that the firms issued before the recession in order finance stock buybacks.

But most people have few if any assets. Even by 2018, when the economy appeared strong, 40% of Americans had negative net incomes and were borrowing money to pay for basic household needs.

The heart of the imbalance is America’s wealthy and the corporations they own have huge bargaining power – both market power in the form of monopolies, and political power in the form of lobbyists and campaign contributions. 

Most workers have little or no bargaining power – neither inside their firms because of the near-disappearance of labor unions, nor in politics because political parties have devolved from giant membership organizations to fundraising machines.

Biden’s “stimulus” programs are fine but temporary. The most important economic reform would be to correct this structural imbalance by reducing monopoly power, strengthening unions, and getting big money out of politics. 

Until the structural imbalance is remedied, the American economy will remain perilously fragile. It will also be vulnerable to the next demagogue wielding anger and resentment as substitutes for real reform.

Most Want A Fairer Economy (But Don't Call It Socialism)

 

The charts above reflect the results of a new Axios / Momentive Poll -- done between June 11th and 15th of a national sample of 2,309 adults in the United States. (no moe given).

It shows that the word socialism still scares most Americans (although younger Americans, between 18 and 34, view it more positively). Overall, about 41% view it positively and 52% negatively. 

But that does not mean they don't like the policies pushed by socialists and progressive. About 58% say the economic system favoring the rich is a bigger problem than over-regulation of the marketplace, while only 36% disagree.

And a whopping 66% say the federal government should pursue policies to reduce the wealth/income gap between the rich and the rest of the country, while only 30% disagree.

In other words, most Americans like socialist policies, as long as you don't call them socialism. Too many years of right-wing propaganda has a majority scared of the word.

The Gender Pay Gap Persists In The United States

 This chart is from the Pew Research Center.

It Time To Address The Growing Economic Inequality In U.S.

 The chart above is from Time magazine. It shows the growing inequality in wealth and income in the United States. In 1975, the top 1% had 9% of the country's income, while the bottom 90% had 67% of income. But then the GOP instituted their "trickle-down" economic policies which favored the rich.

Now the top 1% has 22% of the nation's income, while the bottom 90% has only 50% -- and the shift in income continues to grow because the GOP policies remain in place. This shift in income since 1975 amounts to over $50 trillion dollars! That means the rich have taken $50 trillion since 1975 that should have gone to the bottom 90%!

This must change, and that change needs to happen now! If it doesn't, we will quickly become a nation of "haves" and "have-nots" with a disappearing middle class.

We should start by raising the minimum wage, making it easier for workers to organize, and taxing the rich (and corporations) more.

The right-wingers will whine that this is "income redistribution". But the ignore that the $50 trillion was also income redistribution -- from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. Income is always be redistributed in a capitalist economy. It is time that the redistribution be reversed, so all citizens can share in the nation's wealth and income -- not just the rich.

CEO's Make 320 Times The Average Salary Of Workers

The chart above is from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

In 1978, the average CEO made about 31.4 times the pay of the average worker. That was because increasing productivity was shared by both CEO's and workers. But in the 1980's, the Republicans were able to change the economic landscape in this country. They initiated their "trickle-down" economic theory -- which said that giving more to the rich would benefit everyone, because much of that money would trickle down to workers.

But it did not work out as they promised. Since 1978, CEO pay has grown by 1167% (and CEO's raised the pay of other executives to justify the rise in their own pay), while the pay of workers grew by only 13.7%. This created a huge gap between the rich and the bottom 90% of Americans -- a gap that has grown as large as before the Great Depression, and keeps growing larger. It is turning th U.S. into a nation of "haves" and "have-nots" as it shrinks the middle class and increases the number of workers struggling to keep up.

The EPI has produced a report on this growth of CEO pay and it's relation to worker pay, and how it is growing the income and wealth gap. It's an excellent, but lengthy report, and well worth reading to see what is happening in our economy.

Here is a synopsis of that report, and why it matters:

Corporate boards running America’s largest public firms are giving top executives outsize compensation packages that have grown much faster than the stock market and the pay of typical workers, college graduates, and even the top 0.1%. In 2019, a CEO at one of the top 350 firms in the U.S. was paid $21.3 million on average (using a “realized” measure of CEO pay that counts stock awards when vested and stock options when cashed in rather than when granted). This 14% increase from 2018 occurred because of rapid growth in vested stock awards and exercised stock options tied to stock market growth. Using a different “granted” measure of CEO pay, average top CEO compensation was $14.5 million in 2019. In 2019, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 320-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 293-to-1 in 2018 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989. CEOs are even making a lot more—about six times as much—as other very high earners (wage earners in the top 0.1%). From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,167%, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (741%) and top 0.1% earnings growth (which was 337% between 1978 and 2018, the latest data year available). In contrast, compensation of the typical worker grew by just 13.7% from 1978 to 2019.

Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay—and because so much of their pay (about three-fourths) is stock-related, not because they are increasing productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills. This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%. The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more).

The Wealth Gap Between Blacks And Whites In The U.S.

The charts above are from Axios.com. It shows the vast gap in wealth between Blacks and Whites in the United States. Note that at all income levels Whites have much more wealth than Blacks.

It has been suggested that education will even this disparity, but that has not been the case. Note in the second chart that there is a vast difference in wealth at all education levels.

I'm sure Republicans won't admit it, but this springs directly from slavery and Jim Crow laws in the past, and a continuing racism in this country's institutions.

Much has been made of the institutional racism in our justice system, and that definitely needs to be addressed. But we must also address the continuing inequality in our economic institutions.

We have come a long way since slavery and segregation, but these charts show there is still a long way to go.

The Most Unequal Country In The Developed World

At the end of 2019, the United States had 788 billionaires (a 12% increase over 2018), and they controlled $3.4 trillion of the nation's wealth (14% more than was controlled by billionaires in 2018). There were more billionaires in the U.S. than the next 8 countries combined.

Republicans will tell you that is the mark of a successful economy. That is not true. At the same time, the U.S. has the largest percentage of people living in poverty in the developed world -- and that percentage is once again growing. And there are millions of workers out of a job -- a number that is also growing.

This has resulted in the largest income and wealth gap between the richest Americans and the rest of America since the Great Depression -- and that gap continues to grow larger. As the rich get richer, most other Americans struggle to stashed of inflation with their stagnant wages.

This was caused by Republican economic policies instituted about 1980 (when they seized enough power to alter the country's economic policies). They have tilted the economic playing field to favor the rich -- to the detriment of all other Americans. They want you to believe that giving more to the rich benefits everyone -- that the rich's extra wealth trickles down to everyone.

That is a lie. Money does not trickle down in a capitalist system. It flows upward. Giving more to the rich doesn't help everyone -- it just fattens the bank accounts of the rich. And the more wealth and income hogged by the rich just means there is less left for everyone else in the country.

It does not have to be this way. Prior to 1980, rising productivity was shared with workers and everyone benefitted. It can be that way again, but not until the Republicans are voted out of power.

The Economy Is Not As Great As Trump Brags About

Donald Trump (and the Republicans) like to brag about the economy. Trump would have you believe we have the greatest economy we've ever had, and the greatest in the world. Sadly, that is not true.

And our major media outlets don't give us the whole truth. They tell us about small increases in the nation's median household income (the income level where half of households make more and half make less), but they fail to mention that all those increases have done is get us back to pre-recession levels (see chart above). While the rich are making more money than ever, most Americans are just trying to get back to where they were before the recession (and when inflation is considered, they still aren't there).

What is this doing to the country? The United States is becoming more unequal every year. Consider the Gini Index. That index rates a country from 0 (perfectly equal in income) to 1 (where one person gets all the income). In other words, the higher the Gini Index number, the more unequal a country is.

The Gini Index for the United States rose from.482 in 2017 to .487 in 2018. That's a significant jump, and it means the United States became more unequal. In other words, the gap between the rich and the rest of the country once again grew larger. For comparison, the Gini Index for the OECD countries of the European Union is an average of .300. That's a HUGE difference.

Why is this? Why is the United States so unequal when other democracies are not? The two charts below help explain it. It shows the share of income (top 1% vs. bottom 50%) has remained visually flat in Western Europe (with the bottom 50% getting a larger share of the income than the 1%).

The opposite is true in the United States. While it was once true, when the Republicans gained power about 1980 (and changed economic policy) the share of income of the bottom 50% began to fall and the share of the top 1% began to rise. Now the top 1% gets a far larger share of the nation's income than the bottom 50% does. This causes a wide (and growing) gap in income -- larger than at any time since before the Great Depression.

The economy won't truly be great until the nation's income is more fairly divided. The bottom half of the population should not be making less than the top 1%.

Unfortunately, this unfairness is what the Republicans want. They are still believers in the "trickle-down" theory -- the idea that giving more to the rich benefits everyone. That is a failed policy that benefits only the rich, but the GOP clings to it (because the rich are their real constituents).

We need an economic policy that is fair to all Americans. The only way that will happen is to kick the Republicans out of power -- and then hold the newly-elected Democrat's feet to the fire.

Income Gap Between Rich And The Rest Of Us Still Growing

(Cartoon image is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)

The Republican Party, in the modern era, has clung to the "trickle-down" economic policy -- the idea that giving more to the rich benefits everyone in the country, because much of that money will trickle down to everyone else. It has never worked that way, and it got so bad in the 1920's that it led to the Great Depression.

Democrats took over then and instituted economic policies that were much fairer, and for a few decades the middle class grew and the poor were taken care of through a decent minimum wage and government programs. But the GOP was able to again seize power about 1980, and they immediately went back to their failed trickle-down policies.

Since then, the income gap between the richest Americans and the rest of America has grown substantially. The growth of this income gap was kicked into high gear with the tax cuts initiated by George Bush and Donald Trump. Now a new report shows that gap continues to grow and is once again approaching a dangerous level. The Republicans either are blind to the danger this gap poses or don't care. That is a major reason why they must be voted out of power in 2020.

The following is part of a post by Bill Chappell on the NPR website about the continued growth of the income gap:

The gap between the richest and the poorest U.S. households is now the largest it's been in the past 50 years — despite the median U.S. income hitting a new record in 2018, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

U.S. income inequality was "significantly higher" in 2018 than in 2017, the federal agency says in its latest American Community Survey report. The last time a change in the metric was deemed statistically significant was when it grew from 2012-2013.

While many states didn't see a change in income inequality last year, the income gap grew wider in nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia.

The disparity grew despite a surging national economy that has seen low unemployment and more than 10 years of consecutive GDP growth.

The most troubling thing about the new report, says William M. Rodgers III, a professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University, is that it "clearly illustrates the inability of the current economic expansion, the longest on record, to lessen inequality."When asked why the rising economic tide has raised some boats more than others, Rodgers lists several factors, including the decline of organized labor and competition for jobs from abroad. He also cites tax policies that favor businesses and higher-income families.

Income inequality is measured through the Gini index, which measures how far apart incomes are from each other. To do that, the index assigns a hypothetical score of 0.0 to a population in which incomes are distributed perfectly evenly and a score of 1.0 to a population where only one household gets all of the income.

In the U.S., the Gini index figure had been holding steady for the past several years. But it moved from 0.482 in 2017 to 0.485 in 2018. While that change may seem small, it's statistically significant, the Census Bureau says. The agency notes that back in 2006, the figure stood at 0.464.

The Incredible Unfairness Of Wealth In The U.S. Economy

The United States has one of the most unfair economies in the developed world. There is a huge gap between the richest Americans and the rest of America -- a gap in income and wealth as large as it was just before the Great Depression, and it keeps growing worse.

It was not always this way. Because of the Great Depression, Congress (mostly Democrats) passed a number of laws that made the economy fairer. Unfortunately, when Republicans regained enough power in the 1980's, they started dismantling those laws. That has created an economy that is slanted to reward the rich at the expense of everyone else.

The chart above and the post below (from Common Dreams) show how bad those GOP economic policies have been.

Adding to the mountain of statistical evidence showing the severity of U.S. inequality, an analysis published Friday found that the top one percent of Americans gained $21 trillion in wealth since 1989 while the bottom 50 percent lost $900 billion.

Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing think tank People's Policy Project, broke down the Federal Reserve's newly released "Distributive Financial Accounts" data series and found that, overall, "the top one percent owns nearly $30 trillion of assets while the bottom half owns less than nothing, meaning they have more debts than they have assets."

The growth of wealth inequality over the past 30 years, Bruenig found, is "eye-popping."

"Between 1989 and 2018, the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion," Bruenig wrote. "The bottom 50 percent actually saw its net worth decrease by $900 billion over the same period."

"Enormous crisis," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) tweeted in response to Bruenig's analysis.

"We have the worst inequality in this country since the 1920s," wrote Jayapal, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "Three wealthiest people in America have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent."