Here’s Yet Another Reason to Believe in Skyrocketing Income Inequality

Continuing on our theme of the day, here’s the total net worth of the Forbes 400 list of the world’s richest people:

This might actually understate things since it’s a global list, not just an American one. But even at that, the wealth of the world’s richest people has gone up nearly 5x in the past 35 years.

My point in putting up all these charts today isn’t to prove that income inequality has gone up any particular amount. It’s just to show that there are lots of data points which simply aren’t consistent with the notion that income inequality has hardly gone up at all. You can look at the sluggish incomes of the middle class; the rising wealth of the top 1 percent; the skyrocketing wealth of the top 0.01 percent; or any number of other things, and they all point in the direction of income inequality that’s doubled or tripled or more over the past four decades. Given all this, it’s simply not plausible to argue that there’s nothing going on.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.

No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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