b'How big is this elephant? A staggering $50 trillion. That is how much the upward redistribution of income has cost American workers over the past several decades.This is not some back-of-the-napkin approximation. According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equi-table income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDPenough to more than double median incomeenough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. Thats $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure. 4The wealth of 644 American billionaires went up almost $1 trillion between March and October of this year. To remedy such imbalances, well need regulation and taxation and political reform. But to heal the cultural divide between Whole Foods counties and Cracker Barrel counties, well need something else. 54 Nick Hanauer and David M. Rolf, TIME, September 14, 2020 (https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-in-equality-america/)5 According to The Cook Political Report, in the 2016 presidential election, 76% of counties that have a Cracker Barrel went Republican and 22% of counties with Whole Foods went Republicana gap of 54%. In this years election, the gap widened to 57%, with 84% of Whole Foods counties going Democrat. In 1992, the gap was 19%. (Meet the Press, November 8, 2020)11'