New Study: “Top 1% acquired 25 times as much $$ as the bottom 99%

This won’t come as a surprise to many of you, but recent income gains have gone almost exclusively to the country’s richest one-percent according to a new study by the Economic Policy Institute.

The data shows that just in 2013, the top 1 percent of American families acquired 25 times as much income as those in the bottom 99 percent. The average income for the top 1 percent was $1.2 million, while the average income of the bottom 99 percent was $45,567.

“We’re on this conveyor belt that is spinning off greater and greater amounts of income to a tiny group of people,” says economist Mark Price. “It threatens to undermine the engine of our economic growth, which is our people.”

It’s numbers like these that show just how critical all of the victories the Fight for $15 has piled up recently (in New York, California, Seattle, etc.) are for today and for future generations.

“Because ability is distributed randomly rather than according to the income of your parents, the great danger is that the next brain surgeon or inventor of apps for things that will fundamentally improve human health and capacity might be born to poor parents and not… realize their full potential,” research Mark Price added. “That doesn’t just hurt them, it hurts us all.”

See more on the study here.