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" Three things stand out. First, the bottom 90 percent’s share began to drop dramatically between 1982 and 1990. Second, with each upturn, more and more of the benefits have gone to the top. Third, the real incomes of the bottom 90 percent dropped for the first time in the recovery that began in 2009. Never before had median household incomes dropped during an economic recovery. The three-decade pattern suggests the vicious cycle has accelerated: Those with the most economic power have been able to use it to alter the rules of the game to their advantage, thereby adding to their economic power, while most Americans, lacking such power, have seen little or no increase in their real incomes. FIGURE 8. DISTRIBUTION OF AVERAGE INCOME GROWTH DURING EXPANSIONS Source: Pavlina R. Tcherneva, “Reorienting Fiscal Policy: A Bottom-up Approach,” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 37, no. 1 (2014): 43–66. This trend is not sustainable, neither economically nor politically. In economic terms, as the middle class and poor receive a declining share of total income, they will lack the purchasing power necessary to keep the economy moving forward. Direct redistributions from the rich sufficient to counter this would be politically infeasible. Meanwhile, as ever-larger numbers of Americans conclude that the game is rigged against them, the social fabric will start to unravel. "
― Robert B. Reich , Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
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" In 2014, corporate profits before taxes reached their highest share of the total economy in at least eighty-five years, tying the previous record set in 1942 when World War II pushed up profits (only to have most then taxed away). Between 2000 and 2014, quarterly corporate after-tax profits rose from $529 billion to $1.6 trillion. This rise didn’t reflect increasing returns to capital; it reflected increasing economic power. As I will show, this pushed the stock market to unprecedented heights, thereby enriching investors—most of whom are already in the upper ranks of the nation’s wealthy. Meanwhile, labor’s share of the economy has dropped. In 2000, labor’s share of nonfarm business income was 63 percent. In 2013, it was 57 percent, representing a shift from labor to capital of about $750 billion annually. Importantly, "
― Robert B. Reich , Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
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" Finally, expert witnesses, academics, and inhabitants of think tanks would be required to disclose any and all sources of outside funding for testimony, books, papers, or studies that are put in the public domain. That way, if an “expert” funded by Koch Industries asserts that humans have no part in climate change, for example, or a professor funded by the National Retail Federation finds that raising the minimum wage leads to less employment, the public would have a means of evaluating the neutrality of such claims. "
― Robert B. Reich , Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few