Charts of the New Gilded Age
The always valuable Economic Policy Institute has its top 10 charts of 2014. They mostly say the same thing in different ways–there is an enormous crisis in income inequality and wage stagnation that is concentrating wealth in the 1% while leaving the rest of us either stagnant or in economic decline. There are real policy solutions to these problems–higher tax rates on the rich, wage increases, making unionization easier, a greater social safety net. But the bipartisan belief that Wall Street is ultimately right–a belief backed up with loads of cash in the post-Citizens United era–makes it hard to see significant legislation fixing these problems in the near future.