a fifty-year view.
One of the central perspectives of my forthcoming book The Heist: how the rich and corporations stole the American dream and how we can take it back is the many changes over the past fifty years in who controls the economy and how that affects who wins.
The two charts below demonstrate the enormity of the victory of the rich and corporations in creating the billionaire class that now controls Washington.
These numbers, $59,970,000,000,000, $3,600,000,000,000, and the rest, are so large that they need some context. The entire GDP of the US was $28,5 trillion ($28,489,000,000,000) in 2024. So, the $59,97 trillion in wealth held by the top 1% is slightly more than twice the entire US GDP.
The scale of this inequality is so vast that it is truly beyond comparison. My book explains how this victory by the rich and corporations took place over the last fifty years. This is class warfare in action. Just not the one that phrase typically calls forth.
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