Molly Ivins On Inequality, 1992

Over at Crooks & Liars, Bill in Portland, Maine, who writes the regular front-page feature "Cheers and Jeers," is a big fan (as am I) of the late Molly Ivins, a Texas journalist and author who came to my attention when she repeatedly skewered Bush & Co. back in the early 2000s. Bill frequently quotes from Molly's work in a "Molly Ivins Moment," and this is today's:

During the past two years, we have gotten several studies of the economic impact of the eighties, all of them grim. The latest studies show that 60 percent of the wealth created in the decade went to the richest 1 percent of Americans. An additional 14 percent of the wealth went to the richest two percent. And yet another 20 percent of the new wealth went to those in the richest 20 percent, leaving 6 percent of the new wealth to be spread among the remaining 80 percent of Americans.

[Vice President Dan Quayle] says the answer is two-parent families, but according to a study done by the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, based on Census Bureau data through 1989, two-parent families are having to run harder than ever just to stay in place. Their income in inflation-adjusted dollars rose 8 percent between 1979 and 1989. That includes all income levels. It was a rate of growth one half of that in the seventies, one fourth of that in the sixties, and one fifth of that in the fifties. ---May, 1992

Wow! There have been a number of articles in the last few days trumpeting the demise of the U.S. middle class, which has been surpassed by a number of other countries ("We're number five! We're number five!"), and I've seen several right-wingers who have blamed this situation on Obama, as if it has only happened recently. In addition, Thomas Piketty's blockbuster new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, is focusing a lot of attention on economic equality in the U.S. -- and thank you, Paul Krugman.

Of course, the hollowing-out of the American middle class started during the Reagan years, with his policies of privatization, deregulation, trickle-down ("voodoo") economics; things improved greatly under Clinton, but W. accelerated the decline. But it's fascinating that Molly Ivins had nailed this phenomenon as far back as 1992.