Growing income inequality is turning the US into a dual economy

 

RT  22 Apr, 2017

Growing income inequality is turning the US into a dual economy, with one economy for the rich and another for the poor, according to an MIT professor, who warns that the middle class is vanishing.

In his new book, “The Vanishing Middle Class," Peter Temin, professor emeritus of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, warns that the US is moving backward and becoming more like a developing nation, as the “the vanishing middle class has left behind a dual economy.”

“We are still one country, but the stretch of incomes is fraying the unity of the nation,” Temin wrote in the introduction of his book, according to a copy obtained by Barnard College.

The economist describes a dual economy, where the gap between the rich and the poor has grown wider.

Temin points to a study from the Pew Research Center, which, he said, “shows that the income share lost by the middle class has gone to people earning more than double the median income.”

“In short, the rich got richer. The poor did not disappear, and the middle class shrank sharply,” Temin wrote. “We are on our way to become a nation of the rich and the poor with only a few people in the middle.”      RT