Oxfam introduces its Jan 2014 report Working for the Few with a quote from US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both.” The report is concerned with the “growing tide of inequality” and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few individuals.
The report shares these startling statistics:
Reagan-era tax breaks for the wealthy, which were instituted in 1980 and have become the norm for Republican presidents to continue since then, have resulted in the following financial effect on American households, as detailed in an article on An Economic Sense blog
IN YEAR 2010
• Income for the bottom 90% of households is -5% lower than 1980 levels
• Income for the bottom 9% of households is 35% higher than 1980 levels (those with incomes between the 90th and 99th percentiles)
• Income for the top 1% of households is 333% higher than 1980 levels
• The rate of growth for the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has remained steady at 1.9% since 1880
