Russ Vernon-Jones

The U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world. Our economy has been tremendously productive and our total wealth has grown dramatically. Yet millions of people in the U.S. don’t have enough to eat; millions lack adequate homes; and millions still lack health insurance. We seem unable to adequately fund our schools or to find the funds to address the climate crisis.

The problem is that the tremendous wealth our nation has accumulated is distributed in a grossly unfair manner.
• The top 1% holds 30% of the wealth of the nation.
• The top 10% holds 66%.
• While the bottom 50% holds only 2.5%.
At the very top, the wealth of the nation’s 801 billionaires is greater than all the wealth of the bottom 50% (66.5 million households) of the nation combined.

This is simply the way our current political-economic system works. It funnels wealth to the already wealthy. According to Time magazine, since the time of Ronald Reagan, the economy has moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 1%. It doesn’t have to work this way.