How the rich devoured the American economy, in one chart

How the rich devoured the American economy, in one chart

In America, a rising economic tide lifts all boats, right? Not anymore. Pavlina Tcherneva, an economist at Bard College, plotted the distribution of income growth between the bottom 90 percent and the top 10 percent during economic expansions in the United States. The red bars are the richest 10 percent of people, the blue bars are everyone else:

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.