Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics [7],
[8]
Plenty of talk has gone into the rising income inequality that America has experienced since the early 1970s. But income is merely a wealth flow, and the truer measure of equality is the distribution of net worth and financial wealth (the wealth stock).
The historical change is clear: the bottom 80% have gotten considerably poorer both in financial wealth and in terms of total net worth:
[9]
[10]
This widening gap between the rich and everyone else is not a case of people being rewarded for their talents. Some income and wealth disparity is an inevitable effect of the market process. But the reality of today is more of a case of oligarchs harnessing the power of government bailouts, monetary policy [11], corporate subsidies [12], pork, quantitative easing [13], barriers to entry [14], favourable regulation, SuperPACs, Citizens United [15], lobbyists [16], market-rigging [17] (etc, etc, etc) to get whatever they want.
