Keystone’s Vampire Squid
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
The wealthiest Pennsylvanians have captured a growing share of the state’s income over the past three decades, according to a new report from the liberal Keystone Research Center and Economic Policy Institute.
“The levels of inequality we are seeing in Pennsylvania and across the country provide more proof that the economy is not working for the vast majority of people and has not for decades,” according to a statement by Mark Price, a study author at the Keystone Research Center. “It is unconscionable that most American families have shared in so little of the country’s prosperity over the last several decades.”
In Pennsylvania, the wealthiest 1 percent captured 51.5 percent of all income growth between 1979 and 2011. By 2011, the top 1 percent controlled 17 percent of Pennsylvania’s wealth, up from 9.3 percent in 1979. The last few decades of deindustrialization and shrinking union power reversed a long era, inaugurated by the New Deal, which saw a decline in the top 1 percent’s share of income from 22 percent in 1928 to 9.3 percent in 1979.
