Here’s a different way of looking at the American economy, courtesy of David Leonhardt:
![](https://www.motherjones.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/blog_gdp_bottom_90_percent.jpg)
This is similar to my chart from Wednesday except that Leonhardt shows incomes of the poor going up slightly while I show them going down slightly. Either way, the natural question is: where did all the money go? The answer, of course, is that it mostly went to the men and women who nearly destroyed the world ten years ago until Barack Obama bailed them out. Now they’re busily working with Donald Trump to lower their own taxes and repeal the modest regulations that were put on their banks.
As near as I can tell, they are hellbent on causing another financial meltdown sometime in the next decade. And why not? The last one worked out pretty well for them.