A RAND Study Destroyed the Concept of Unfettered Capitalism and Nobody Noticed

It happened two years ago and hasn’t gotten much attention since it came out.

Photo by Jorge Salvador on Unsplash

Two years ago, I was scrolling through my daily Medium newsletter, and I came across a Fast Company article from October 6, 2020. It neatly sums up the outcome of a RAND study which found that had incomes kept up with the economy, the median income would be about $42,000 higher than it currently is. Here’s the article if you’re interested.

The study itself is loaded with interesting data, which I’ve gone through with my layman’s knowledge, but the linked article sums it up nicely. Here’s the actual report, if you’re a data wonk and would like to read it:

U.S. Economic Growth Has Not Been Shared Evenly Since 1974

The study found that across basically every demographic that was measurable in their timeframe (1975–2018), real income growth for the vast majority of people did not keep up with economic growth. Their premise was that measuring across all quintiles (that’s every 20%) of income brackets, income growth should roughly match…