Reducing inequality

[stpioc]

And, lest not forget, apart from changes in taxes, the 14M+ private sector job creation since the financial crisis is not only providing employment opportunities, but finally the labor market is tight enough for wages to start rising:

Much current commentary takes as a given that wages in the United States remain stagnant. And given that average annual wage growth was only 0.1 percent annually from 1980 to 2007, that sentiment is understandable. However, a recent but unambiguous uptick in wages has shown that stagnation in workers’ pay is anything but inevitable. Average real wages for production workers have grown by nearly 6 percent since the end of 2012, more than all the wage growth from 1973 to 2007. And the Census Bureau reported that in 2015 the typical household saw its income grow by $2,800, or 5.2 percent, the fastest rate on record. Last year also saw the largest single-year reduction in poverty since the 1960s.

Moreover, these wage increases have been broadly shared. In fact, workers at the 10th percentile (who earn about $20,000 a year) have seen the strongest wage growth, in part because millions of workers have gotten a raise in the 18 states and the District — as well as the more than 50 cities and other local governments — that have raised the minimum wage. This is in part why households toward the bottom of the income distribution had record income gains last year that exceeded the gains by any other income group.

How Obama has narrowed the income inequality gap - The Washington Post