Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now

$1 trillion / 153 million workforce = ~$6500 / worker = $13,000 per household

It's not too hard to imagine that somehow this money tends to flow moreso towards people in the upper quintile (straight wage-earners would miss out, whereas the investing class has many avenues to receive it), so it wouldn't surprise me at all that 1 household could end up with their "share" plus that of 2 others, so: $13,000 * 3 = $39,000 household income based on govt deficit spending $112,541 - $39,000 = $73,500 household, /2 = 36,500 per person in "real", non-deficit enhanced earnings required to make the top quintile.

Made up entirely, but I don't think it is an unrealistic scenario at all. The enormous deficits we are now running can go a long way in hiding the truth for a very long time. Meanwhile, the debt grows and grows, and the interest on that debt gets larger every year. I just don't see how debt is inconsequential, but the vast majority of people seem to act as if it is (at least those who are even aware of it).

First of all, I would disagree that social mobility is increasing. Rich kids are doing better than ever.

Secondly, I believe history indicates that hereditary aristocracies are actually less brutal and dangerous than "merit"-based ones. It is the revolutionary forces that destroy societies and kill tremendous amounts of people. People born into poverty who work their way to the top through a sociopathic drive for power and look down on everyone else with a blame-the-victim mentality.

These people are dangerous. And Hacker News is full of them.

So the interesting question is not why economic inequality is increasing, but why for a few decades in the mid twentieth century the trend was reversed.

There are probably several factors at work here, but as someone who was around and paying attention at the end of that period, I think the key to the answer is the large corporation. The period of flattening coincides with the heyday of the large corporation.

Large corporations tend to decrease economic inequality. You can't measure individual productivity well within large organizations, and even if you could, it would strain the fabric of the organization to reward people that way. They also hide a lot of inequality by giving elite employees benefits that don't show up in their salaries (http://paulgraham.com/ladder.html).

What happened at the end of the 1970s was that the most ambitious people started to lose interest in working their way up the corporate ladder. They wanted to get paid upfront. That was why the term "yuppie" was born then. Before 1980 it was rare to find young professionals with lots of money. In the old days, they were all still paying their dues at that age.

I remember the transition quite clearly. When I was a little kid, in the early 70s, the most impressive thing you could do was to work for a large corporation. It was the era of conglomerates in shiny office towers. By 1980 we were starting to see a glimpse of the world we now live in, where the ambitious people are all free agents.

I could move to Nebraska but it is unlikely I could find a job that would afford me a residence.

This isn't about social norms, this is about whether the computer revolution has been worth it for the great majority of Americans.

A lot of Americans would kill right now for a job in steel or coal. And in 1960s America you didn't even need a high school diploma to own a house.