The $60 Trillion Question
Putting America Last: A World Without Friends — Volume 8
Armando Oscar Olmos & Maria Teresa Zambrano Rivera
Since 1981, more than $60 trillion in income that once would have gone to working Americans has flowed to the top. This book, based on RAND Corporation research, shows how that happened and what it cost ordinary families. If the shared growth of 1945–1974 had continued, today's median full-time worker would earn close to $100,000 instead of $50,000.
The book traces the change to specific decisions: the 1981 and 1986 tax cuts that dropped the top rate from 70% to 28%, the firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers, the 1982 SEC rule that opened the door to massive stock buybacks, and decades of financial deregulation. The result is that productivity rose more than 65% while worker pay rose less than 18%. CEO pay grew to 350 times that of workers, and today the top 1% hold more wealth than the entire middle class.
The book ends with a plan to reverse the trend: fair taxation, stronger labor rights, limits on buybacks, and public investment that rebuilds a shared economy.