The below infographic, posted by the New York Times on September 4 2011, illustrates a striking picture of the wealth gap in the United States and shows how the last three decades have greatly varied from the the previous three. While not the only solution for this problem, higher taxes for the wealthy would be a good start to shifting back to a more sustainable and “happier” wealth gap.
As many studies have suggested, societies with smaller wealth gaps generally claim to be happier… even the wealthy! As one Live Science article states, “If we care about the happiness of most people, we need to do something about income inequality.” How about we start in this country by encouraging our senators and representatives (both Democrat and Republican alike) to end the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and set us on a course for a happier tomorrow. After all, even Warren Buffet thinks we should Stop Coddling the Super Rich!
Looks to me like the graphic artificially drew a line at 1980 to make a political point about Reagan and the “right turn” starting a “downturn.” Whatever your politics, and without reference to any external sources, the graphic alone shows the wage stagnation starting at 71-73. The ham-handed attempt to make everything go wrong only since 1980 — as if the 1970s were still in some golden era of prosperity — would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that so many readers don’t see through the propaganda.
Let’s have an honest talk about our challenges. The primitive view the NYT is pushing is no better than the primitive opposite view.
Thanks, Joe Blow, for pointing this out. I agree that we should have an honest talk about our challenges, but find it ironic that you request this honest talk while using a fake name to post your comment under. I’ll admit that this infographic only shows you one snapshot of an immensely multidimensional aspect of our nation’s history. But to the point of my original comments, the increasing wealth-gap in our nation hasn’t been misrepresented here and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. In what ways might we go about addressing this factor that makes our nation less happy?
It’s amazing how people see different things. This commenter sees wage stagnation beginning at 71-73, I see debt rates relatively stable until the 80s when they began exploding even with moms going to work to keep standards of living stable, great wealth for the tippy-top rich exploding from 1980 on, even still not dipping below the 1980 level when so many of the rest of the country lost everything in the stock crash and not even dipping below 1990 levels during the dot-com crash when, again, so many of the rest of us lost everything.
Finally, I too see some disparity between productivity and wages beginning at 71 in that the lines are not as close together, but you can also plainly see when the productivity line bumped upward, so did wages. When the productivity line dipped, so did wages. Only at the 1980 demarcation do you see productivity consistently explode and the relationship between productivity and wages completely divorced.
An honest discourse requires an honest assessment. Usually an honest assessment requires more than two eyes. This is a start.