Inequality is costing workers $50 trillion (with Carter Price)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yesterday, a groundbreaking study by the RAND Corporation put the first-ever price tag on how much income inequality costs American workers. The bill? $50 trillion. You read that right: $50 trillion has been diverted from working Americans to the wealthiest 1% since 1975. To make sense of this staggering number, Nick and Goldy are joined by mathematician Carter Price, the study’s co-author. Carter C. Price is a senior mathematician at the RAND Corporation. Twitter: @CarterCPrice If you like the show, please consider leaving a rating or a review! RateThisPodcast.com/pitchforkeconomics Further reading: The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90% - And That’s Made the U.S. Less Secure: https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/ “We were shocked”: RAND study uncovers massive income shift to the top 1%: https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1 Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com/ Twitter: @PitchforkEcon Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Nick’s twitter: @NickHanauer

Transcript

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0:00.0	For years we've been talking and writing about the massive redistribution of income and
0:06.8	wealth from ordinary working Americans like me to super rich like you and we always knew that number was big but my God Nick now
0:17.9	we know exactly how big it's been yeah in fact bigger than we thought. It sums up to 47 trillion dollars.
0:25.3	That's money they could have had in the bank.
0:29.2	From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics,
0:38.0	with Nick Hanauer.
0:40.0	One American capitalist take on how we got into this mess and how we can get out.
0:48.0	I'm Nick Hanauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:51.0	I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic. Civic Ventures.
0:57.0	So Nick, for years, for years we've been talking and writing about the massive redistribution of income and wealth from ordinary working Americans like me to a super rich like you.
1:13.0	And we always knew that number was big, but my God, Nick, now we know exactly how big it's been.
1:21.0	Yeah, this is a very exciting day for us or moment for us because finally
1:27.0	someone with the math and economics chops to get to the bottom of exactly how much money has been redistributed from the bottom to the top has done it.
1:39.0	And the Rand Corporation, which is one of the most credible nonpartisan think tanks maybe in the world has done this amazing analysis of what has happened basically to incomes since 1975 and the results are simply shocking.
1:59.0	And in fact bigger than we thought. In 2018 dollars 2.5 trillion dollars per year has been redistributed
2:10.0	upward from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1% of Americans.
2:16.8	What's particularly shocking is the people in the 90th to 99th percentile, they basically
2:21.1	just held their own. Right.
2:23.0	Even people in the 90th percentile fell behind.
2:26.8	And be clear, that's $2.5 trillion out of a $ trillion dollar economy.
2:33.0	It's about 12% of GDP.
2:37.0	And we now know by decile, you know, how badly people were hurt and for a full-time median worker using
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