The wealthiest 1% has taken $50 trillion from working Americans

In a Pew poll conducted last fall, 61% of all respondents agreed that there was too much income inequality in America these days. Virtually everyone can feel that the difference between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest is growing out of control, but we don't understand how big that gap is, or how fast it's expanding, or how many Americans are losing money because of it.

That's why a new report from the nonpartisan Rand Corp. is so important. Rand's researchers analyzed American incomes between 1975 and 2018 to determine who is earning less money, who's earning more money, and where the money has gone. The results are jaw-dropping.

Each year, $2.5 trillion — yes, trillion with a "T" — has been redistributed from the bottom 90% of Americans to the wealthiest 1 % of all Americans.

That's roughly $50 trillion —again, with a "T"— that used to go to middle-class and working-class Americans that has instead been rerouted to the pockets of the top 1%. When viewed through the data in this report, that huge gap in income inequality doesn't look so much like a law of nature as it does a massive heist.