NEW STUDY: Nearly $80 Trillion Redistributed from the Bottom 90% to the Top 1% Since 1975

NEW STUDY: Nearly $80 Trillion Redistributed from the Bottom 90% to the Top 1% Since 1975

WASHINGTON, March 4 – As Republicans prepare legislation to provide more tax breaks to billionaires with massive cuts to programs working families need, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today highlighted a new report from the nonpartisan RAND Corporation, which found that nearly $80 trillion in wealth in the United States has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the top 1% over the past 50 years.

“Over and over again, my Republican colleagues have expressed their deep concern about the redistribution of wealth in America, and they are right,” said Sanders. “The problem is that it has gone in precisely the wrong direction. Since 1975, nearly $80 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. The massive income and wealth inequality in America today is not only morally unjust, it is profoundly damaging to our democracy. Given this reality, we cannot provide another $1.1 trillion tax break to the top 1% by making massive cuts to healthcare, housing, education and nutrition assistance as President Trump and Republicans in Congress want to do. We must do the exact opposite.” 

Here are the key highlights from the RAND Corporation report:

  • Since 1975, $79 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1% in the United States. This represents the cumulative cost of lost wages to workers below the 90th percentile due to rising inequality from 1975 through 2023. Average real income in the top 1% grewby 321.6 percent from 1975 through 2018, nearly three times the 118 percent growth of real per capita GDP over the same period.
  • In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. This represents the difference between what the bottom 90% of workers earned in 2023 compared to what they would have earned had income distributions remained at the more equitable 1975 levels.
  • $3.9 trillion would be enough to give every full-time worker in the bottom 90% a raise of $32,000 a year raise. For perspective, $3.9 trillion is equivalent to 14% of the entire US economy.
  • Working Americans have seen their share of taxable income steadily fall for 50 years. In 1975, the bottom 90% of workers received 67% all taxable income. By 2019, their share had fallen below 47% — a three point drop since just 2015.
  • Median household income would be double what it is today if income inequality had remained the same as it was in 1975.

Read the full report here.