27 years of economic pain for most Americans

By AIMEE PICCHI MONEYWATCH, CBS News

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/27-years-of-economic-pain-for-most-americans/

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If one could put a price tag on pain, look no further than the lack of economic progress for most American families since 1989.

In that year, Ronald Reagan left the White House after two terms of his “trickle-down” economics, and a new era of democratization was heralded as the Berlin Wall fell. Since then, U.S. GDP has more than tripled, while the S&P 500 has surged more than sixfold.

Yet most Americans haven’t reaped the benefits from those expansions, as the middle class treads water and the poorest get more deeply mired in debt, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office that was prepared for Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). The report puts real dollars behind the economic pain currently reflected in the discontent many Americans are voicing as the November presidential election nears.

But while so many are losing out, the rich have grown only richer, the report finds.

“The reality, as this report makes clear, is that since the 1980s there has been an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the wealthiest people in this country,” Sanders said in a statement. “There is something profoundly wrong when the rich keep getting richer and virtually everyone else gets poorer. That is unacceptable, and that has got to change.”


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