you’re in the top 10 percent, your wages have risen. We already knew this. And, of course, the higher you are on that economic pyramid, the greater your gains. The top 1 percent far outpaces the 9 percent below them, and so it is with the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and on and on. But if you have a high school degree or less, your wages have declined in the last thirty-nine years. A lot. If you’re in the middle of the middle class—the 50th percentile of earners—you’re making 12.3 percent less than you were making in 1979, adjusted for inflation.
