aPo: Democrats Need Elizabeth Warren's Brand of Populism [View all]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27589-democrats-need-elizabeth-warrens-brand-of-populism

The breadth of support for the populist critique of the American economy is apparent in a range of surveys. In a Washington Post/ABC poll conducted just before the midterms, 71 percent of Americans said that our economic system generally favors the wealthy — a figure that included 59 percent of conservatives and 56 percent of Republicans. Andrew Levison’s book “The White Working Class Today” includes an analysis of a 2011 poll by the Pew Research Center showing that 54 percent of working-class whites “strongly” believed that “corporations make too much profit,” while just 28 percent believed that those profits were “fair and reasonable.” By a margin of better than 2 to 1, those respondents also said that Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps it.

The critiques and policies that Warren advances resonate with a far wider segment of the public, and more particularly the potential Democratic electorate, than those equating her with Cruz would have us believe. Economic populism is not a niche ideology, and here’s why:

At the request of some trade union officials, the Economic Policy Institute recently conducted an unpublished analysis of research on the past 100 years of income tax data compiled by University of California at Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez. Looking at income growth (excluding government payments and benefits) from 1935 through 1980 — the years of the New Deal economy and high union membership — the institute found that the bottom 90 percent of households claimed 70 percent of the income growth. The 90th to 95th percentiles claimed 11 percent; the 95th to 99th, 12 percent; and the wealthiest 1 percent claimed 7 percent.

Looking at the United States we live in now, however — from 1997 through 2012 (the most recent period for which tax data are available) — the institute found that the 90th to 95th percentile claimed 9 percent of all income growth and that the 95th to 99th claimed 19 percent. The wealthiest 1 percent saw its share balloon to 72 percent.

Do the addition, and you’ll see that adds up to 100 percent. The bottom 90 percent of American households got none of the income growth of the past 15 years, as income from work declined and income from investment soared.