This RAND study finds that the median income in the U.S. would be $42,000 higher than it is today if the income gains over the last forty years hadn’t gone mostly to the top 10 percent.

And a college-educated worker making $70,000 today would be earning roughly $120,000 if the income distribution was the same as it was in 1975 — before the “rising tide” began lifting only yachts.

The reasons we are seeing the rich taking an ever-larger share of the economic pie? Tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthy, bail-outs and monopoly profits for corporations, attacks on unionized workers and higher tax burdens for the lower and middle classes.

Price, Carter C. and Kathryn A. Edwards, Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html.