After decades of shrinking income and wealth inequality in the postwar period, inequality has risen steadily since the early 1980s. The vast preponderance of economic growth since that time has benefitted the richest Americans: in the most recent decade, 65 percent of all income growth went to the top 1 percent of the population, while the median income of nonelderly households fell, and the share of Americans living in poverty rose.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 655