Maxwell Strachan — The U.S. Is Even More Unequal Than You Realized

 But for truly shocking numbers, consider America’s even more-exclusive 0.1-percent club. Those super-duper-rich people -- we’re talking Warren Buffett rich -- saw their share of the income pot jump all the way to 8 percent in 2010 from just 2 percent in 1980. The super-duper rich swoop up smaller percentages in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

The super-rich getting super-richer would all be well and good, except that it doesn’t appear the nation’s “wealth creators” are creating much wealth for anyone else. According to the OECD’s report, the pre-tax, inflation-adjusted incomes of the bottom 99 percent have only grown by an average of 0.6 percent per year in recent decades. Add in the top one percent, and the country's income growth rate jumps to 1 percent.

This lack of trickle-down prosperity is a key focus of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, the new manifesto by French economist Thomas Piketty that destroys the argument for supply-side economics.

The Huffington Post
The U.S. Is Even More Unequal Than You Realized
Maxwell Strachan