Richmond Times - Dispatch:
Politifact Virginia – Bernie sanders says top 0.1% in U.S. have almost as much wealth as bottom 90%
21 September 2015
We decided to examine Sanders' statement that the richest 0.1 percent has nearly as much as the bottom 90 percent. Its a standard line in Sanders' speeches. Warren Gunnels, policy director of Sanders' presidential campaign, said the senator's source for the statistic is a Nov. 13, 2014, article in The Guardian, a British newspaper. As our colleagues at PolitiFact Wisconsin have written, the article reported on the findings of a research paper, about wealth inequality during the past 100 years. The study was commissioned by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan organization in Cambridge, Mass., which is best known as the arbiter for determining when the U.S. economy falls into recession. The authors of the study were economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics. Using tax records, they made estimates for 2012 on wealth - that is, the value of all assets, such as a home, and savings and retirement accounts, minus all debts, such as mortgages and credit card balances.
This article was published by the Richmond Times - Dispatch on September 21, 2015
Link to article here
Related publications
Inequality: Are we really 'all in this together'?, Gabriel Zucman, CEP 2015 Election Analyses Series, April 2015
Abstract | Full paper
Related links
Gabriel Zucman webpage
Growth Programme webpage