The wealthiest 1% had to make do with a measly 9-12% of all income for the first three decades of the post-WWII era. Makes you wonder how the poor things scraped by.

Then thanks to Ronald Reagan, their share climbed to 15%, and then the dot-com bubble briefly pushed it into the low 20s. I gather that the extended graph would show that it’s right back up there again.

John Edwards is right about two Americas, one for the extremely wealthy, and another for the rest of us. Time to undo this latest Gilded Age.