The US is Doing a Great Job at Increasing Economic Inequality
Image by Elyse Chia.
There are those who want to make America great again who generally fail to discuss one area in which the U.S. has already achieved greatness by not just maintaining the accomplishment but also by making it greater: Economic Inequality.
One achievement, that has enabled the growth in economic inequality, has been how, for more than 16 years, the national government has maintained the official minimum wage at $7.25 an hour with no adjustment for increases in the cost of living. One working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks at the minimum wage would end up earning $15,080 in a year.
In 2024, the government’s poverty threshold [pg. 17] for a single person under 65 years of age was $16,320 with those making less deemed to be impoverished. That means that the full-time minimum wage worker is earning $1,240 less than the poverty threshold.
Don’t assume this minimum wage worker will get to live on all that money earned. That earned income of $15,080 is subject to social security, Medicare, and income taxes that are offset by the earned income credit (assuming the person is at least 25 and under 65) that results in $894 in taxes not including possible state taxes, taken from the $15,080 on which one is to pay for living expenses.
Growing Income Inequality
Growing income inequality has been widespread and increasing as is brought out in government statistics that Trump has so far not prevented from being made available.
According to the government [pg.33], the average household income of those among the 20% of the population with the lowest income in 2024 was $18,460. This amont represents an increase of $2,800 since 1990 in 2024 inflation adjusted dollars, an 18% increase over 34 years of less than $85/year. By contrast, those households in the top 5% of income during this same period experienced an 84% increase of $256,800, over $7,500/year, enabling them to reach an average income of $560,000 in 2024. Their average income relative to those in the bottom 20% went from being 19 times greater to over 30 times greater.
Additionally, the income of the top 5% relative to those in the second lowest 20% of households during the same period went from being 7.7 times greater to over 11.3 times as great.
And the top 5%’s income relative to those in the middle 20% went from being 4.65 times as great to over 6.6 times as great, adding to the further assault against economic equality.
Hell, even those in the second highest 20% saw their income relative to those in the top 5% go from being one-third as much as that of the top 5% to one-fourth as much despite growing $38,760 from 1990 to 2024.
Hence, greater income inequality favoring the wealthy has been widespread and has been coming at the expense of most of the rest of the population.
Then There is Growing Wealth Inequality
Growing income inequality helps to foster growing wealth inequality. Here the growing inequality is especially skyrocketing.
The most recent set of figures from the Federal Reserve Board show that from 1990 to the second quarter of 2025, the share of the country’s wealth held by the wealthiest .1% of the U.S. population went from 8.6% to 13.9%, an increase of over 60%. In nominal dollars (not adjusted for inflation) that comes to a growth from $1.8 trillion in 1990 to $23.33 trillion halfway through 2025, an almost 13-fold increase. During that same period, the poorest 50% saw their nominal wealth grow from $.73 trillion to $4.21 trillion, a rate of growth less than half of that of the wealthiest .1% and is likely largely attributed to the increasing value of the homes some of them own and that fill a necessity of a place to live in. Assuming the U.S. population is 342 million, the average wealth holdings of the poorest 50% of the population halfway through 2025 stood at $24,610/person while that of those among the wealthiest .1% came to over to $68 million/person, over 2,700 times greater.
Far outdoing the wealthiest .1% are the wealthiest 10 within their ranks. In 1990, according to the Forbes list of the 400 richest people, the 10 richest were worth $25.92 billion. By 2000, that amount had grown almost ten times to $254.7 billion. It generally continued to grow during most of the next decade until the great recession that saw its total in 2010 at $264.6 billion, $9.9 billion greater, which is less than a 4% growth from year 2000. However, the entire wealthiest .1% was doing better. According to the Fed, their wealth came to $6.29 trillion in the first quarter of 2010, over 33% greater than $4.7 trillion which is where it stood in the first quarter of 2000.
There is no need to fret over what appears in the 2010 figures to hint at slow progress in the relatively greater fortunes of the wealthiest 10. At the end of 2020, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, their holdings had more than quadrupled to $1,068.5 billion. As of the end of October 2025, it was up over nine-fold from 2010, reaching $2,420 billion.
In 35 years, the wealth of the wealthiest 10 U.S. citizens had gone up more than 90 times from where it stood in 1990 with six of them being multi-centibillionaires—with wealth holdings of more than $200 billion.
In 1990, the ranks of the wealthiest ten came from more diverse sectors in the economy. Today, they are largely populated by tech bros. Only Warren Buffet, who was a member of the top ten in 1990, remains among the top 10 today, a time in which his wealth increased from $3.3 billion in 1990 to $144 billion as of the end of October 2025.
In contrast to the minimum wage worker who must pay federal taxes, to further secure inequality, our wealthy friends generally pay no income taxes on most, if not all, of the increase in their wealth. They likely pay taxes on the portion of their assets that generate income in forms such as rent, interest or dividends, or they sell their assets at a gain. This income is subject to income taxes unless it is offset by losses and deductions. Additionally, this income of the wealthy, unlike the income earned from work, is not subject to social security or Medicare taxes. Furthermore, their gains from the sale of most assets that have been held for more than a year and most dividends are subject to a lower tax rate than what is imposed on income earned from working. And if the interest is generated from the ownership of most municipal bonds, it is exempt from being subjected to an income tax.
If Trump ever takes full credit and claims responsibility for growing economic inequality that has gone on for years before his regime began, you might reach a shocking conclusion! Our great leader, the stable genius, who is causing much immiseration in the U.S. and around the world, would be lying.
Trump and Government Statistics
Trump has shown he is not fond of some government statistics. He recently brought a halt to the annual report on household food insecurity which, as this is written, with the cuts in the SNAP program, could dramatically increase.
However, Trump, may not seek to end the reports of the Federal Reserve Board figures on the distribution of household wealth or the Census Bureau figures on income because, unlike figures on food insecurity, they show his wealthiest buddies what has been happening in their favor at the expense of people who Trump might call a bunch of losers.
The Future
Will the wealthiest continue to make even more impressive gains in their income and wealth holdings that foster even greater economic inequality? Certainly, that is a powerful tendency of an exploitative capitalist economy. However, a stock market “correction” could have an adverse impact as could an economic downturn, a nuclear war, an environmental collapse or some other catastrophe.
Furthermore, no one needs and should be allowed to accumulate $100 billion or even $1 billion which is 1,000 million, or even $100 million, especially when there are people who are hungry and homeless. However, for the time being, unless people with much potential power, especially the working class, get organized and see to the confiscation and/or a heavy tax on the wealth of the wealthiest, given the current power of billionaires, little change in inequality should be expected.
At the end of last August, President Donald Trump asserted that average wages for U.S. workers had risen by $546 during the first six months since he returned to office in January 2025. As with virtually all of Trump’s pronouncements, this one bears little relationship to the truth. In fact, when using the most reliable government data on wages and then controlling for inflation, workers’ wages did still rise under Trump, but by $26—that’s 95% less than the $546 average pay raise proclaimed by Trump.
The reality of wage stagnation under Trump is fully consistent with his broader attack on working people. As just one example, the labor historian Joseph McCartin called Trump’s move in March to cancel the union rights of more than one million federal government workers “by far the largest single action of union-busting in American history.”
Still worse is that wage stagnation to date under Trump follows what is now a 50-year pattern. In 1973, the average nonsupervisory employee earned $29.15 an hour (in 2024 dollars). As of 2024, that average wage was $30.13. Over the same time period, the average productivity of U.S. workers—the average value of what they produce when they show up at work—rose by 150%. If these workers had received raises every year between 1973 and 2024 just equal to their increased productivity, but not a penny more, their average hourly pay today would be $72.88 an hour.
To further clarify the current pay levels for nonsupervisory workers, compare their current average hourly wage of $30.13 with what we could consider a living wage standard. There are various ways in which one can define what we mean by a living wage. In A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of a Consumer Society, Lawrence Glickman defines the term qualitatively, as being a wage level that offers workers “the ability to support families, to maintain self-respect and to have both the means and leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation.”
A research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has produced a Living Wage Calculator that provides detailed annual quantitative estimates of living wage standards for every state and county in the United States, as measured relative to the cost of living in each area. Their definition of what constitutes a living wage in a given community is less ambitious than the standard suggested by Glickman. Specifically, according to the MIT Calculator’s definition, “The living wage is the basic income standard that, if met, draws a very fine line between the financial independence of the working poor and the need to seek out public assistance or suffer consistent and severe housing and food insecurity. In light of this fact, the living wage is perhaps better defined as a minimum subsistence wage for persons living in the United States.”
Working from this lower-end but still reasonable definition, the MIT researchers estimate living wages for various family household types, including those with one or two adults and between zero to three children. For example, their living wage estimates at the state level for family households with one adult and one child range between a low of $32.62 an hour in Mississippi and a high of $55.15 an hour in Massachusetts. These figures yield the striking result that even the low-end Mississippi living wage of $32.62 an hour is 8% above the $30.13 average now being earned by nonsupervisory workers in the United States. The $55.15 Massachusetts living wage is 83% higher than the current average hourly wage of $30.13.
Since the early 1990s a strong political movement in the United States has fought to establish living wage standards at the municipal and state levels. The movement has achieved some significant successes. Between 1994 and 2010, living wage laws were enacted in over 125 cities and counties. At the state level, 30 states and Washington, D.C., now have minimum wage rates above the poverty-level federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Washington State has the highest state-level minimum wage at $16.66 an hour. The minimum wage for Washington, D.C., is still higher, at $17.95 an hour.
Yet these state and city living wage rates remain uniformly well below even the MIT Calculator’s lower-end standards. Given the broader 50-year pattern of wage stagnation in the United States, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the living wage movement has not been successful enough, despite great efforts by thousands of organizers and activists throughout the country.
Under Trump, we can only expect more of the same outright lies and vicious assaults on workers’ rights, job opportunities, and living standards. It is therefore now imperative to revive the living wage movement throughout the country. A ramped-up living wage movement can become one important force contributing to the resistance against Trump and Trumpism. More fundamentally still, a revived living wage movement can be a means for building working class power and, with that power, delivering pay levels for nonsupervisory wages that—after 50 years of U.S. wage stagnation—can reach true living wage standards.
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