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Anew analysis has found that nearly $80 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the richest 1 percent over the past 50 years, as neoliberal policies have come to roost and billionaires are poised to use their vast power to worsen wealth inequality in the coming years.
Five years ago, researchers for RAND found that roughly $47 trillion earned by the working class between 1975 and 2018 was instead given to the richest 1 percent, in 2018 dollars. This calculation was based on calculations of the growth of the bottom 90 percent in the decades after World War II, when income distribution held steady between groups.
In a new analysis published last month by RAND extending the analysis to 2023, RAND found that that figure is now $79 trillion in 2023 dollars, with inflation accounting for roughly $10 trillion of the growth.
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In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion was redistributed from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent — enough to give every worker a raise of $32,000 per year, per the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who highlighted the new analysis in a release this week.
The massive growth in the wealth gap has been fueled by the steadily falling share of economic growth going to the working class since the 1970s, amid the rise of neoliberalism as ushered in in large part by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
In 1975, RAND found in its most recent report, the bottom 90 percent of Americans received about two-thirds of all taxable income in the U.S. That share dropped to 47 percent by 2019, with over half of income going instead to the top 10 percent.
If rates of income growth had remained equitable from the rates prior to the 1970s, the median household income today would be double what it is now, the analysis found.
“The massive income and wealth inequality in America today is not only morally unjust, it is profoundly damaging to our democracy,” Sanders said in a statement on Tuesday.
Sanders’s statement comes as the Trump administration — including the richest man in the world, Elon Musk — seeks to even further widen the wealth gap with recently proposed tax policies and massive cuts to crucial anti-poverty programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“Given this reality, we cannot provide another $1.1 trillion tax break to the top 1 percent by making massive cuts to healthcare, housing, education and nutrition assistance as President Trump and Republicans in Congress want to do,” Sanders said. “We must do the exact opposite.”
Indeed, analyses show that Trump’s policies are set to widen the wealth gap even further. According to a recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, President Donald Trump’s tax proposals, like the extension of Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts and reducing the corporate tax rate, would provide $36,320 yearly in tax savings to the richest 1 percent, or people with incomes of over $914,900 a year. Meanwhile, the bottom 95 percent of Americans would see a tax increase.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
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