The huge and growing gaps in wealth and income inequality are much in the news these days — from Washington to the Vatican and here’s why: the plain facts are simply stunning and overwhelming. To see this in black and white (or, to be more accurate, red, orange and blue) click here and here to check out two new animated graphs from Chad Stone of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (a third one will be released shortly).
As Stone notes by way on introduction with the understated language of a crack economist:
“The economic fortunes of the wealthy and everyone else have diverged sharply in recent decades. It wasn’t always this way; from the end of World War II into the 1970s, income growth was shared equally among all segments of the population. But, as we’ll illustrate in three animated graphs, most of the income growth in recent decades has occurred at the very top.”
As the graphs show here and here, that’s putting it gently.
