In the 1980s, while growth remained sluggish, inequality exploded. Thanks to the outstanding and painstaking work of Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, the world now knows what happened: 1980 is the year Reagan was elected. It is also almost exactly the year the share of national income that goes to the richest 1 percent reverses fifty years of decline and starts a relentless climb in the United States. In 1928, at the end of the Roaring Twenties, the richest 1 percent captured 24 percent of the income. In 1979, that number was about a third as big. In 2017, the last year to be included at the
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