“The hardship imposed on the middle class becomes even more unpardonable when compared to the increasing wealth at the very top of the income scale. In the 1970s, the chief executives of major corporations earned roughly 40 times what an average worker made. In 2013, CEOs at the top 500 corporations averaged compensation packages totaling 354 times the typical worker’s pay—in other words, they made each day what most workers earned in a whole year. And even beyond chief executives, there’s the obscene money going to those who manage money. In 2012, four hedge fund bosses each received payouts of over $ 1 billion—just one carried off $ 2.2 billion, thus averaging over $ 6 million every single day. Or put it this way: if he clumsily dropped a $ 100 bill, that would represent just over a second of his time, and in the seven seconds it took him to bend down to pick it up, he would have made another $ 500. The six heirs to the Wal-Mart empire currently hold the same amount of wealth, roughly $ 90 billion, as the poorest 30 percent of Americans combined—something possible not only because the rich are so rich, but because the poor are so poor. No wonder escalating economic insecurity dominates the public’s fears. Not since the gilded years preceding the Great Depression has the United States been so economically unequal, and so financially precarious for those in the middle.”
— Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian Haney Lopez
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