Bernie Sanders on economics: what the evidence says · JRE #1330
SUBJECT: ECONOMICS
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
Over the last 30 years, the top 1% has seen a $21 trillion increase in their wealth. The bottom half of America has seen a $900 billion decline in their wealth.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Sanders' figures match a June 2019 analysis by policy researcher Matt Bruenig (People's Policy Project) of the Federal Reserve's then-newly released Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) data, which has tracked U.S. household wealth by percentile group quarterly since Q3 1989. That analysis found the top 1%'s net worth rose by about $21 trillion while the bottom 50%'s net worth fell by about $900 billion between 1989 and late 2018, a span matching Sanders' 30-year framing. The Federal Reserve's own DFA series, confirmed live on its site, is the underlying dataset used for that calculation, though the Fed does not publish the $21 trillion / $900 billion figures itself as a standalone headline statistic; they were derived by an outside researcher from the Fed's public data. The direction and rough scale are consistent with the Fed's official percentile-level wealth series, which shows the top 1%'s wealth share rising substantially since 1989 while the bottom half's share has stayed near or below zero. A separate, related Sanders wealth-inequality claim drawing on Federal Reserve data was rated True by PolitiFact, which described Federal Reserve wealth data as a gold-standard source documenting a widening wealth gap.