Imagine for a moment that a presidential candidate made this speech:<\/p>\n
My fellow Americans, I\u2019m here today to tell you about my economic plan. Each year, I will require every middle-class family across this great country to write a check. We will then pool the money and distribute it to the richest Americans among us \u2014 the top 1 percent of earners, who, because of their talent, virtue and success, deserve even more money.<\/p>\n
The exact size of the checks will depend on a family\u2019s income, but a typical middle-class household will hand over $15,000 each year. This plan, I promise all of you, will create the greatest version of America that has ever existed.<\/p>\n
You would consider that proposal pretty radical, wouldn\u2019t you? Politically crazy. Destructive, even. Well, I\u2019ve just described the actual changes in the American economy since the 1970s.<\/p>\n
Economic output \u2014 known as G.D.P. \u2014 per person has almost doubled over this period. But the bulk of the bounty has flowed to the very rich. The middle class has received relative crumbs.<\/p>\n
If middle-class pay had increased as fast as the economic growth, the average middle-class family would today earn about $15,000 a year more than it does, after taxes and benefits. Instead, that middle-class family effectively forfeits the money to the rich, year after year after year. (Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary, first got me thinking about calculations like these.)<\/p>\n
To the Rich Goes the Bounty <\/strong><\/p>\n Cumulative change since 1979 in total economic output and incomes (after taxes and government transfers).<\/span><\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/int.nyt.com\/chartmaker\/2019\/02\/04\/20190202-to-the-rich-goes-the-bou\/3\/artboard-600px.png\")
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