The letter says: “We know that high inequality undermines all our social and environmental goals. It corrodes our politics, destroys trust, hamstrings our collective economic prosperity and weakens multilateralism. We also know that without a sharp reduction in inequality, the twin goals of ending poverty and preventing climate breakdown will be in clear conflict.”
It wasn’t since 2008, it was more or less since Reaganomics and the neoliberal push in the west around the same time. It’s been the same shit ever since, and it’s 100% bipartisan. In fact, the worst offender since Reagan was definitely Slick Willy Clinton, who killed Glass-Steagall and introduced the telecommunications act of 1996, allowing for consolidation of every media empire and telecom network, which severely limited broadcast journalism’s investigative power. It’s been nothing but mega mergers and 1% fuckery ever since. The last chance was Occupy, anyone else remember the lack of coverage? I was in Europe at the time and had to watch fucking RT to see anyone talking about it. They will never let that happen again.
What most of us need to remember, is that they never let it happen the first time around either.
There is a noticeable uptick in the wealth share of the top 1% after 2010, while their share had fallen en been quite stable between 1995 and 2010.
https://equitablegrowth.org/the-distribution-of-wealth-in-the-united-states-and-implications-for-a-net-worth-tax/
Looks like it briefly went down in 1995 and then started climbing around 9/11 and the war boom. Didn’t the dot com bubble happen around 1995? I figure that could account for the random downturn.