Inequality and Its Consequences
The accumulation of evidence on wealth concentration, stagnant wages, and the unraveling of the middle class
Economic inequality in the United States is not a matter of perception or political framing -- it is a matter of documented fact, measured with increasing precision by economists using tax records, wealth surveys, and administrative data. The trends are large, consistent, and not adequately explained by the skill and effort of the individuals at the top or the bottom of the distribution.
Wealth Concentration
The data on American wealth distribution is unambiguous: a century of compression reversed after 1980, producing inequality not seen since the Gilded Age.
Piketty and r > g
When the return on capital exceeds the rate of growth, wealth concentrates. Thomas Piketty's formula and what it means.
The Cost of Living Crisis
Wages have stagnated. Housing, healthcare, childcare, and education have not. The arithmetic of middle-class life no longer works.
Financialization
As manufacturing declined, finance expanded -- extracting value rather than creating it, while reshaping the entire economy around its logic.
The Middle Class in Numbers
What the data shows about who the middle class is, how large it is, and how its position has shifted since 1980.