Washington Post: Why the U.S. Economy Is Worse Than It Seems

The situation looks very different at the high end of the economic scale. Over the past decade, the nation’s highest earners (the 95th percentile) saw their wages grow at almost four times the rate of those whose earnings put them in the middle of the pack (the 50th percentile). Even more remarkably, the top 1 percent of households now hold 31 percent of the nation’s wealth (assets minus liabilities), or $30 trillion, while the entire bottom half of the nation’s households hold only about 1 percent, or $1 trillion. That comes to $23 million per household for the top 1 percent and $18,000 in net worth per household for the bottom half. And the Trump tax cut is exacerbating these divisions, with a recent analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showing that in 2020, more than half of the tax cut will go to the top 5 percent of households, with only 14 percent going to the bottom 60 percent. Read more