In recent years, as economic inequality in America has grown, many researchers have tried to figure out just how much wealth and income those at the top have. These figures then come to stand for the magnitude of economic inequality in the U.S. One such finding is that of Emmanuel Saez, the Berkeley economist and Thomas Piketty-collaborator, who has found that America’s 1 percent’s share of total U.S. income is roughly 20 percent.
But a new paper from the Brookings Institution challenges this and other calculations of Saez and Piketty, arguing that while wealth and income inequality are indeed increasing (nobody disputes that), they haven’t done so at the magnitude that Piketty and his colleagues have found.
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