Yes it’s true that America’s income gap is widest since the Great Depression (NPR), but It’s even worse that that:
- This is just income and doesn’t include the wealth already amassed by the wealthy so the real difference in economic well-being is much larger.
- Back in the 30s Americans had effective labor unions and most were aware of the situation they were facing. Today, this is no longer the case so the efforts to correct this imbalance are very weak.
- The political parties in the 30s had some accountability to the majority and not only to their wealthy corporate owners. Hence FDR was willing and able to represent “main-street” and not only “Wall-street” despite strong pressure, and even an attempted coup, by the “banksters.”
- While it was certainly a painful collapse of the economy, the Great Depression was in the middle of a very long period of growth in wages and standards of living for the majority of Americans. This period ended in the mid 70s and for the vast majority of Americans, things have been getting worse for 3 decades and getting catastrophic in the last few years. In this context, the long term, irreversible, damage is much worse today than in the 30s.
Consider a bad flu hitting a strong young person as opposed to a chronically ill old person: same disease but worse effects and dismal prognosis :'(
Punkonomics (@DearBalak) 