"It's the Inequality, Stupid"

[BernieforPres2016]

I was looking around for some information on income and wealth inequality and came across this good summary in 11 charts from the March/April 2011 Mother Jones. The trends would have only continued since then.

The list of all of the 10 richest members of Congress (7 of the 10 were Democrats) voting for the extension of the Bush tax cuts during Obama's first term is one of the interesting data points.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

[pat_k]

1. FWIW. some more good charts from inequality.org

http://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/wealth-inequality-charts.pdf

P.S. the distribution of assets paints a far worse picture, than income inequality. Particularly when you break out bottom as bottom 50, 50-80, and so on. I can't find a good chart, but when you break it out that way, the bottom 50% have a truly tiny percentage of the national wealth.

For some reason, charts always seem to break out the bottom 80 from as one lump (which includes people who are quite wealthy).

[BernieforPres2016]

2. Thanks, I have seen those as well.

Even when the data is broken into quintiles, on a long term chart the bottom 4 groups usually look like almost one line stuck at the bottom.