Video: The Top 1% Now Owns More Wealth Than the Entire Middle Class
In this short video, I go over the new federal data that showcases America's growing inequality problem. Parallels are also drawn to recent smoking gun moments, like the Pandora Papers.
A news article from Bloomberg discusses how "The middle 60% of U.S. households by income -- a measure economists often use as a definition of the middle class -- saw their combined assets drop to 26.6% of national wealth as of June, the lowest in Federal Reserve data going back three decades. For the first time, the super rich had a bigger share, at 27%.”
There has been a clear decrease in financial security for mid-tier earners, fueling discontent among them over the past few decades. In this video, I discuss the issues with wealth accumulation as a self-perpetuating mechanism. And thanks to tax cuts for the wealthy, billionaires and multi-millionaires can dominate through their "shadow economy."
The United States faces a major problem with barriers to accessibility, and these barriers exist along wealth, age, racial, and gender lines (and many others.) Further, I cite solutions based on an OECD report, which promotes a wealth tax, coupled with other types of targeted taxes. But an uphill battle remains, as many people, especially on the right, promote a reactionary vision. This vision is characterized by increasing/maintaining certain social hierarchies, and bolstering the aforementioned barriers to wealth accessibility.