The claim that the bottom 50 % has had no gains in economic benefit, certainly for market based economic benefit is a very dramatic claim. So what my first question is, does the addition of the national income approach, or the nation come accounts data, affect that very much? Because that bottom 50 %, they're not getting a big part of the corporate retained earnings, i assume, or other things that aren't in taxes or survey data. And so this trand that there has been zero growth and pretax income for the bottom heald for the distribution. You could see it already pretty well in tax and survey data. We we tax and surveyData have limitations. Is not really for
Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his research on inequality and the distribution of income in the United States over the last 35 years. Zucman finds that there has been no change in income for the bottom half of the income distribution over this time period with large gains going to the top 1%. The conversation explores the robustness of this result to various assumptions and possible explanations for the findings.