Unfair wealth distribution on rise in US: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Jack Rasmus, a professor of political economy based in San Francisco, to discuss wealth distribution in United States.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Well, 63 percent of Americans are feeling that the distribution of wealth in the US is unfair. Your assessment in general, Sir?

Rasmus: Well, it is not surprising because the latest data by university economists who are now... have been since 2002, analyzing IRS tax data, where this information comes from... since 2009 and the end of the recession, during so-called recovery, 91 percent of all the net income gains had been accrued to the wealthiest one percent households. Before that, it was 65 percent, during George Bush term, but during Obama’s term it has increased to 91 percent and now it is beginning to be reflected in more popular works, books by economists and in newspaper reports and so forth... it is finally getting out there. And people are quite aware of the extremes that exist in terms of income and inequality that are accelerating; it is not getting any better, it is actually getting worse.

The interesting thing though is that the politicians are not saying too much about what they are going to do about it, neither are a lot of economists saying what to do about it. It is mostly reporting about the dimensions of it with very little explanation about how this actually happened.

Press TV: And your explanation, Sir? How it happened? Of course, very briefly... but in general how did we get here that there... if we look, if we go back several decades ago looking at the United States’ overall, it seemed that there was a more evenly... it was a more evenly distributed economy. But the extremes now are so obvious. Why is that the case? Why does it appear that it is getting worse?

Rasmus: Well, getting worse really begins with Ronald Reagan in the early 80s and it has been accelerating ever since. But there is basically two reasons, you can create more income and inequality by holding down wage incomes, by hiring people part time and temporary and not raising the minimum wage and destroying unions in America which has been going on intensely for the last couple of decades under both Republican and Democrat presidents. Now that is one way... the other way is by accelerating the incomes of the very wealthy. And there was another very interesting thing I reported on after some investigation here very recently. And that is that since 2010 we have had 5 trillion dollars in stock buybacks and dividend payouts where just the largest 500 companies have paid back 5 trillion dollars to their stockholders who are the wealthiest one percent mostly and just this year it is going to be another trillion dollars. Well, you can get rich by giving more money to the wealthy, or you can get income and inequality by holding down wages for the rest. Both are going on now, and that is why we are getting this accelerating income inequality in the US.

MTM/MKA

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