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income inequality
Since 1975, $79 Trillion Has Flowed From Bottom 90% to Top 1% in US: Analysis
Sanders used the findings of a recent working paper to denounce Republicans' determination to pass tax cuts that will benefit wealthy Americans the most.
Mar 04, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday used a new working paper about income distribution over the past several decades to push back against congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump's effort to pass more tax giveaways for the rich.
The recent working paper from the nonpartisan research organization RAND, which was authored by Carter Price, aimed to quantify how much money the majority of workers—the bottom 90% by income—would have made if earnings growth had not begun to disproportionately flow to those with the highest incomes starting in the 1970s.
According to Price, assuming the same distribution of income among workers as in 1975—and taking into account continued economic growth, continued growth in inequality, and inflation—the majority of workers would have made an additional $3.9 trillion dollars in 2023. Cumulatively, "the gap between what workers from 1975 to 2023 earned and what they would have earned with the counterfactual income distribution" tallies at $79 trillion in 2023 dollars, per Price.
"The massive income and wealth inequality in America today is not only morally unjust, it is profoundly damaging to our democracy," wrote Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday in response to the study.
The analysis updates earlier numbers on the same topic. A previous analysis from Price and a co-author found the gap between what the majority of workers earn and what they could have earned if the more "uniform growth rates from the 50s and '60s" had continued totaled $47 trillion in 2018 dollars.
Sanders used the update from RAND to discuss the current aims of Trump and Republicans in Congress.
"Over and over again, my Republican colleagues have expressed their deep concern about the redistribution of wealth in America, and they are right," Sanders continued. "The problem is that it has gone in precisely the wrong direction."
Sanders opposes Republicans' intent to provide tax cuts primarily for the wealthy, which will almost certainly be paid for by cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and more. "We must do the exact opposite," he wrote.
Last week, House Republicans were able to pass a budget resolution that tees up those tax cuts after Trump intervened to pressure wavering members to vote for it.
The resolution instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to "submit changes in laws within its jurisdiction to reduce the deficit by not less than" $880 billion over the next decade. That panel has jurisdiction over Medicaid, which the GOP has repeatedly targeted in public and private discussions, with one leaked document floating over $2 trillion in cuts to the program.
Republicans also rejected numerous Democratic amendments that would have prevented Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts in the upcoming budget reconciliation process as their resolution moved through committees.
Sanders has been a consistent voice speaking out against the cuts. "Trump and his Republican friends want to enact massive cuts to the [Medicaid] program. We won't let them," wrote Sanders last week.
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As GOP Pushes Tax Giveaways for the Rich, Sanders Launches 'National Tour to Fight Oligarchy'
"Today, the oligarchs and the billionaire class are getting richer and richer and have more and more power," the senator said. "This country belongs to all of us, not just the few. We must fight back."
Feb 13, 2025
As Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration scour the federal public services infrastructure looking for cuts to healthcare, food assistance, and consumer protections that could offset the $4.6 trillion deficit hole the GOP is intent on creating by extending tax cuts for the rich, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing for a "National Tour to Fight Oligarchy."
With Americans inundated with news about Trump's billionaire megadonor, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ransacking federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency—and little to no news about President Donald Trump's supposed plans to reduce the cost of living—Sanders (I-Vt.) is intent on speaking directly to voters during his nationwide town hall tour, titled, "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here."
The senator, who garnered support from working-class Americans and young voters during his Democratic presidential runs in 2016 and 2020, will kick off the tour with stops in Omaha, Nebraska on February 21 and Iowa City, Iowa on February 22.
The first stop lies in the House district represented by Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who this week expressed some hesitation about voting for a GOP budget proposal that could include steep spending cuts, including potentially to Medicaid. Bacon's district was carried by former President Joe Biden in 2020 and former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
A Sanders aide toldPolitico that the senator aims to influence the Republicans' fight over the budget, which has reportedly made some GOP members of the House, where the party holds a slim majority, uneasy about backlash from voters in upcoming elections in 2026 and 2028.
As Common Dreamsreported on Tuesday, a recent poll by progressive think tank Data for Progress showed voters from across the political spectrum don't want lawmakers to make cuts to federal student loans, Medicare, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or renewable energy programs—all of which the GOP has eyed as it aims to do the bidding of wealthy donors and extend the 2017 tax cuts which primarily benefited the country's top earners.
In a statement, Sanders on Wednesday said his town hall tour will help Americans make sense of how they "can fight back against President Trump and Elon Musk," who are "quickly moving the country toward authoritarianism, oligarchy, and kleptocracy."
"Today, the oligarchs and the billionaire class are getting richer and richer and have more and more power," Sanders said. "Meanwhile, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and most of our people are struggling to pay for healthcare, childcare, and housing. This country belongs to all of us, not just the few. We must fight back."
Allies of the progressive senator said his direct engagement with voters is also likely a response to Democratic leaders' approach to the first weeks of Trump's second term in office. While Democratic lawmakers have spoken out against Musk's attempted takeover of federal agencies and some have pushed for strategic opposition to the Trump agenda, leaders in the party complained in a closed-door meeting this week about progressive advocacy groups that have urged the Democrats to act as a genuine, cohesive opposition party.
In a press conference this week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) appeared perplexed by the idea that Democrats should try to counter Trump's agenda, saying Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the party is "not going to go after every single issue" as it fights the president.
Last week, Jeffries garnered scorn for meeting with more than 150 donors in Silicon Valley in an effort to "mend fences" as numerous high-profile tech executives have aligned themselves with Trump.
The House leader also appeared unmoved by "The Weekly Show" host Jon Stewart's suggestion in an interview this week that the Democrats have "gotten away from New Deal values" and should focus on pushing for policies that help the working class rather than simply improving "messaging."
Anna Bahr, a spokesperson for Sanders, told Politico that "it may be hard to believe, but at least one person in Washington is more interested in talking with working-class people than running for office or fundraising."
"Sen. Sanders is doing what he has always done: meeting people all over the country to discuss our failed healthcare system, housing crisis, and the wealth and income inequality that is only intensifying," said Bahr.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who co-chaired the senator's 2020 presidential campaign, told the outlet that the Democratic Party needs Sanders "in strategic states making the case to define the future of our party for the next 20 years."
"Sen. Sanders has been a prophet for where the Democratic Party needs to go in standing up for working-class Americans," said Khanna, "and opposing the unholy alliance of wealth and power."
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Staring Down the Abyss of 2025
The basis of hope for a better future, I believe, is the courage to accept reality. A change of collective consciousness is our best shot at not only surviving but thriving.
Jan 05, 2025
2025 offers an intriguing mix of the certain and the uncertain.
Here’s what is certain: Democratic institutions will continue to crumble, witness the erosion of the rule of law in the U.S. and elsewhere; long-standing norms governing public affairs, such as a bar to prosecuting political opponents, will loosen their grip on behavior; countless species, especially among birds and insects, will go extinct; a host of “unnatural” disasters attributable to climate change, like wild fires and floods, will devastate wondrous landscapes and settled communities; politically or environmentally-induced mass migration, as experienced now in the various parts of the world, will become more pervasive; income inequality between the top 0.01% and the lowest 50% will increase; economic stability, as in the world-wide acceptance of the U.S. Dollar, will wane.
While not a certainty there’s reason to give added credibility to the risks of nuclear warfare, catastrophic climate tipping points, metastatic ethnic cleansing, and a world-wide pandemic, with mass extinction the result.
Within our own narrower, national context, certainties include the highest ever figures for extraction of natural gas and oil, continued increases in chronic diseases such as Type-2 diabetes and cancer, ballooning healthcare costs per capita, upward swings in gun sales and school shootings, dramatically increased levels of homelessness, and more intrusion of microplastics into the oceans and into our bodies.
An unfettered grasp of our situation can offer up considerable light, hope, even optimism; and it can strengthen our resolve and solidify our resilience.
Uncertain are the targets, timing, locales, extent of severity, and designation of victims related to these eminently predicable developments in the world and in our country. Unclear is what will constitute right and effective action in the face of this inevitable political, social, and environmental unravelling. Finally, the grounding for individual and collective action—spiritual moorings, moral anchors, forms of mutual aid—remains inchoate.
To be human is to know we are going to die. This is certain. With each passing day of 2025, my physical being will be undergoing its own forms of unravelling, making death more proximate. What I don’t know is when and under what circumstances it will occur. Nor do I know for sure what my attitude and affect will be should I be conscious at the time.
With increasing disintegration worldwide and the social fabric in this country fraying, what can one do, how should one approach and contend with encroaching forms of “death” in the world and in this country? What are citizens’ essential responsibilities? For me what are mine as a mate, a father, grandfather, and friend?
You, the reader, might conclude, as you absorb all this, “How pessimistic, how fatalistic!” It will likely surprise you that that is not my mind set at all. Rather I am of the mind that the truth indeed sets one free. An unfettered grasp of our situation can offer up considerable light, hope, even optimism; and it can strengthen our resolve and solidify our resilience. Take a hard look at the obverse: that burying unvarnished realities has improved our prospects. Hardly! Denial, obfuscation, euphemism, soft- pedaling, and distraction have not improved things. In fact, a strong case can be made that they have produced exactly the opposite, a deepening of our plight.
So I beckon my fellow citizens to adopt a different strategy, one that willfully accepts our dire circumstances, without wallowing in them, thus offering the chance of achieving more positive outcomes than our current predicament presages. The basis of hope for a better future, I believe, is the courage to accept reality. A change of collective consciousness is our best shot at not only surviving but thriving.
That I will die soon is certain. That 2025 heralds negative trend lines on multiple fronts is certain. But this is where the parallel can end. With a willingness on all our parts to accept our dire lot we can begin to veer away from what now seems a foregone conclusion.
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