Income Inequality: Nothing Has Changed, In Fact It Is Worse

One might think that the great financial crisis would have produced a different approach to our political economy or that it would have corrected the gross income inequalities that had contributed to the crisis in the first place.

But that would be wishful thinking. Regardless of the political party in power or the severity of economic deprivation imposed on the working class -- yes "working class" (the "middle class" is dead) -- the ruling oligarchy and plutocracy have ensured that they will continue to appropriate all the economic gains produced by the economy.

The latest figures confirm this pattern. The full story is here  based on the continuing exceptional research of Emmanuel Saez at University of California-Berkeley. The one finding that says it all:
"America's top 1% have captured 95 percent of all income gains over the first three years of the recovery" 

I am not sure the feudal system was as effective at capturing such a large proportion of the surplus. Thus it is no surprise that Richard Freeman has a wonderful lecture on "Toward Economic Feudalism".