Where We Live: Why The Rich Keep Getting Richer
The growing income gap, thanks to the government?
The old saying goes, “The Rich Get Richer.” We shrug our shoulders and move on…but why?
I mean, why do the rich always get richer – even in an economic downturn? The usual suspects include globalization, an education gap…greed.
But in a new book called “Winner Take All Politics” Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson say it’s our system of government that feeds the rich – while turning its back on the middle class.
Hacker is a political scientist at Yale, and a frequent guest here. He’s been examining the middle-class squeeze for years – and now he turns his attention to the political forces that provide a big advantage to the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans…the super-rich.
What’s caused the income disparity? How is Washington to blame? And what can we do about it?
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Shorthand title?
Many of us don't worry that the rich get richer, even in downturns, but out of all proportion to the rest of America.
I don't know up to what percentile an economist has to go to find the people who statistically got a raise during the Bush economic expansion, which lasted ~5 years! I'm guessing the bottom two-thirds or 60% of Americans are still wondering why "the economy" did well during a chunk of the last decade, but they didn't.
And while we're at it, remember that a big chunk of "productivity" is "an exempt salaried worker who is paid for 40 hours and puts in 55".
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