March 9, 2015: For Data Mavens, Devastation of the Middle Class, The Cost of 'Tinkle-Down' Reaganomics.

Robert Reich first emerged upon the national scene as an economics professor at Harvard where he published several books. In 1993 he became Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and thereafter returned to Academia to assume a chair as professor of economics at Berkeley. He’s recently produced a film entitled "Inequality for All" and has become a harsh critic of current economic policies including some of the trade agreements that he had so eloquently advocated two decades ago. Cataloguing the devastation that has been done to the American Middle Class, Reich posted this entry on Facebook March 6:

"For you data mavens, here’s some useful analysis from Professor Emmanuel Saez, my colleague here at Berkeley who, along with Thomas Piketty, has done the key research on income inequality:

The largest share of the income of the top 1 percent of Americans is concentrated in the top 0.1 percent and 0.01 percent. The average income of the top 1 percent in 2013 (latest data available) was $1.2 million; the average for the top 0.1 percent, $5.3 million; and the top 0.01 percent, $24.9 million. If America had the same income distribution now that it had in 1979, the top 1 percent would now be getting $1 trillion less annual income, and the bottom 80 percent $1 trillion more – which would come to about $700,000 less this year for the average family in the top 1 percent, and about $11,000 more for the average family in the bottom 80 percent."

There you have it, the best estimate for the cost of ‘tinkle-down’ Reaganomics has been tabulated to cost the Median Household about $11,000.00 a year.