The Federal Reserve has released its 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. The charts below were compiled by the People’s Policy Project. The takeaway is that in 2016 the top 10% owned 77% of the country’s wealth, and 38.5% is owned by the top 1%.
Not surprisingly, the gap between rich and poor is increasing. The top 1% owned “only” 29.9% of the nation’s wealth in 1989.
After declining slightly due to the great recession of 2008, the wealth gap between Blacks, Whites and Latinos is increasing again. Mean White family wealth is now greater than it was in 2007, but Blacks and Latinos have not yet recovered from the recession. (By the way, if these dollar amounts seem high, remember that they are means, which are skewed by the wealth of those at the top. The medians are much lower.)
This provides an interesting backdrop for the Republican Tax Plan, which cuts the top individual tax rate from 39.5% to 35%, and reduces the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. (Since capital-based income is concentrated among the rich, a corporate tax cut is simply another tax cut for the rich.) It also eliminates the estate tax. To partially pay for these giveaways, the President proposes cuts of $4.3 trillion to Social Security, Medicaid, public education and other non-military spending. The House Republican budget calls for a $5.8 trillion cut in these same programs.
Here are the results of an analysis by the Tax Policy Center of who benefits from Trump’s tax plan.
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