Income Inequality: Difference between revisions
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[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/rock-economics-and-rebuilding-the-middle-class by Simone Pathe 12/7/13 PBS NEWS] | [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/rock-economics-and-rebuilding-the-middle-class by Simone Pathe 12/7/13 PBS NEWS] | ||
Alan Krueger, outgoing chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, spoke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, last month about inequality in America and ways that the president’s economic policies are supposedly strengthening the middle class. | Alan Krueger, outgoing chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, spoke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, last month about inequality in America and ways that the president’s economic policies are supposedly strengthening the middle class. | ||
=====Studies Reveal Consensus: Trade Flows during “Free | |||
Trade” Era Have Exacerbated U.S. Income Inequality===== | |||
[https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/trade-and-income-inequality_0.pdf by PUBLICCITIZEN] | |||
U.S. income inequality has jumped to levels not seen since the pre-depression 1920s, as middleclass wages have stagnated while the incomes of the rich have surged. | |||
1 | |||
In 1979, the median | |||
weekly wage for U.S. workers in today’s dollars was about $749. In 2014, it had increased just | |||
four dollars to $753 per week. Over the same period, U.S. workers’ productivity doubled.2 | |||
Meanwhile, the richest 10 percent in the United States are now taking half of the economic pie, | |||
while the top 1 percent is taking more than one fifth. Wealthy individuals’ share of national | |||
income was stable for the first several decades after World War II, but started increasing in the | |||
early 1980s, and then rose even faster in the era of the North American Free Trade Agreement | |||
(NAFTA), the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA expansion pacts. | |||
