Why have the rich gotten richer?

I am always hearing the left complain about the rich getting richer. They love to spout the stats of how few people own so much of the wealth. I have one question for those who do this:

What is the reason for this?

The left seems to be worried about such a thing and they try and portray it as bad but they never say why the rich have gotten richer.

 

I just Googled and got over 4 million results, including many on the left discussing this, so maybe start there?

 

Well, I figured since there are some here they could explain.

 

No one can answer yet? Hmmm.....

 

Inherited Wealth

 

Maybe they figured if you were serious you'd just Google?

All kinds of sources to be found discussing it, including WSJ, Bloomberg and literally MILLIONS more.

I can start posting links if your Google is broken.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-28/how-the-top-1-keeps-getting-richer

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/look-numbers-how-rich-get-richer/

http://www.wsj.com/video/why-the-ri...ned/5DD155E1-99E0-4677-82EC-077AEF2E695C.html

And there are millions more - this could become the longest PF thread ever!

 

I just pulled some keywords are am now getting over 21 million results; here are a couple more:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inequality-1-percent-99-percent-income-growth/

http://www.epi.org/action/the-rich-get-richer-and-the-poor-get-poorer/

 

I think you're missing the point Antiduopolist.

 

Up to 40 million; here are just 2 more:

https://www.theguardian.com/society...-rich-got-richer-10-shocking-facts-inequality

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/column-gop-tax-cuts-make-rich-even-richer

 

I would rather hear it directly from those who complain about it. It seems they believe they are smarter than google.

 

Ah well - those links are a head start for everyone then.

Toodles.

 

What links?

 

The answer is quite simple really. The rich have better bargaining power because they are rich.
"An economic arrangement that pays a Wall Street worker tens of millions of dollars per year to do high-frequency trading and pays just tens of thousands to workers who grow or serve our food, build our homes, educate our children, or risk their lives to protect us isn’t an expression of the true value or economic necessity of these jobs. It simply reflects a difference in bargaining power and status." http://billmoyers.com/2014/09/11/a-wealthy-capitalist-on-why-money-doesnt-trickle-down/

 

For one, Obama’s policies helped.

 

+1

This is the main reason neomarxists refuse to answer the question.

 

There are of course fewer people in the top brackets of... anything.
Pro athletes are the “top 1%” in their line of work just like many of the entrepreneurs who have made great wealth for themselves by providing a good/service that people are willing to pay for. Different talents, different potential, different risks, etc.

Politicians are in the business of begging for votes (when they’re not busy begging for money) and what easier way is there then to blame so few, on the problems of so many?

It allows for a never ending cycle of pursuing the great utopia of “equality” except their presented version of equality is an equal result, NOT the equal opportunity, which will of course produce different outcomes since no two people are the same.

By forcing equal outcomes, by definition, inequality must be enforced at the start of opportunity.

 

I thought it’d be obvious. The most efficient and reliable ways of making large amounts of money require some form of upfront investment or credit so people who already have money are better placed to make more.

 

This is a debate and discussion forum. Not a research node.

Care to discuss the topic?

 

Actually, if you look at most of the top 1% people, they mostly came from nothing.

 

Do you have no opinion of your own?

 

Yes. Our society is based on leverage. Those with money can use that money to grow their personal wealth.

The idea that we assign income based on contributions to society is flawed. It would be impossible to assign income based on a jobs contribution as humans are inherently prone to self service.

The only people who claim that this is a reasonable opportunity are the majority in the income levels that would stand to benefit. Nobody that is wealthy is so because they worked a job for a wage. They used the money they earned to grow money through capital gains, risk, and investment.

Everybody working for a wage and de-incentivizing investment is the fastest way to stagnant the economy.

 

Please clarify the focus of your post.

Many of the very most rich started from beginnings that can't be called rich. Are you eliminating them from this discussion? Or, are you asking why they are richer than similar people of prior times?

 

Well, I will leave that up to those who complain about the rich getting richer. I am trying to understand their point of view.

 

I've said why many, many times. I will say so again. However, this is not something that can be explained in a 30 second sound bite which is the total attention span of most person out there. If you want a one-liner, you're likely glaze over and skip my post, and then continue to wonder why no one has explained it to you.

Allow me to clarify your question just a bit. The problem is not that the rich have gotten richer; its that the rich have gotten richer at the expense of the bottom 90% of working Americans -- that the richest have gotten a larger and larger share of the gross national income (and wealth), and that virtually all of the gains and growth in prosperity since 1980 have gone to the top 10% (and proportionally mostly to the top 1% and 1/10% and 1/100%) and very little shared with middle class working American (though working middle class folks have seen small gains in the past 3 years now.)

In my opinion, this has come about by many different factors.

First, some factual background. This chart shows the share of the nation's income that goes to the richest 10%:



What we see is that the top 10% had a very high share of the nation's income until the 1940s when it fell dramatically. It stayed in the 33-35% range for 40 years, until around 1981, when it began increasing dramatically. So to answer your question, what we need to consider is: what happened in the in early 1980s that would cause this sudden explosion of income and wealth disparity?

I think the timing of this phenomenon was no coincidence that it happened at the same time Reagan was elected, ushering in the "Reagan revolution" which featured at its heart the concept of "trickle down" economics. The supposed theory behind the rhetoric was that if you do things that made the richest richer, that money would "trickle down" on the rest of the population. Sound familiar? It's the same thing Bush2 argued and the same thing donald claims as well. I say "supposed" theory because to the cynical, the trickle down argument is just propaganda to excuse things like massive tax cuts that mostly benefit the richest and businesses, while undermining things (unions, OT laws, MW, health care and other benefits, FICA tax cuts, bankruptcy protection, etc) that would help the bottom 90% of American working people do better.

And so, starting with Reagan, Republicans promulgated a bunch of policies and practices and propaganda to help the richest get richer. FICA taxes that working middle class pays (but the very rich effectively do not) were dramatically increased. Top marginal income tax rates, investment taxes, and estate taxes (taxes the wealthier mostly pay but the bottom 90% mostly do not) were slashed by half or more. The minimum wage was not increased. Overtime laws were scaled back or not enforced. Unions were demonized and busted. Regulations protecting workers and consumers were cut back. Just some of the "Reagan revolution" policies where the objective was to make the rich richer on the supposed theory the benefits would "trickle down."

And as the graph above shows, the Republicans agenda it worked fabulously well. The share of the nation's income going to the top 10% and top 1% and above soared. The share of the nation's income going to the top 1% doubled from less than 10% to about 20%. And their wealth soared as well, from having 20% of the nation's total wealth in 1979 to 50% today, according one recent source. The richest took their additional money and invested in the stock market or stuck it in offshore accounts. With earned income tax rates at 35% plus FICA, compared to investment tax rates of just 15%, it should have been no surprise to anyone that people were incentivized to speculate more, and earn less.

But the second part of "trickle down" didn't happen. The money didn't "trickle down". As corporate profits, and incomes and wealth of the 1+% soared, the middle/lower classes saw their incomes basically stagnate over the past 30 years. Real median family income was basically flat from 1979 to 2012. The bottom 90% did not share in the growth and prosperity they helped to create since the Reagan revolution.

So there's the answer. A radical shift in government policies coincided with the explosion of wealth inequality in which the rich got dramatically richer, while the bottom 90% stagnated and did not share in the growth and prosperity they helped create.