It saddens me that you introduce the straw man of the zeroth percentile, "firmly anchored at zero". It wasn't in the linked article, which only talked about quintiles, none of which are anchored at zero. And with respect to these statistics, clearly someone taking an unpaid vacation is not in the class "production and non-supervisory workers".
I have little problem with inequality. I do think there are some downsides, like the threat of violent revolution, but my point is that I'm not making some hobgoblin of wealth or income inequality. I don't really care whether 20% of U.S. wealth is controlled by the top 1% or the top 10%.
But it does strike me as a little troubling to see -4% gains for the bottom percentile over a period of 80% increased productivity (taking those stats at face value).
There is an interesting book, "The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, that makes a very strong argument that in developed countries inequality is correlated pretty much every "bad" metric (health, crime, teenage pregnancy, etc.) of a society.
Now, of course, correlation does not mean causation and it's perhaps more interesting what the true underlying causes are. But if inequality is such a strong indicator, it is worth wondering whether inequality isn't a bad thing in itself.
I have little problem with inequality. I do think there are some downsides, like the threat of violent revolution, but my point is that I'm not making some hobgoblin of wealth or income inequality. I don't really care whether 20% of U.S. wealth is controlled by the top 1% or the top 10%.
But it does strike me as a little troubling to see -4% gains for the bottom percentile over a period of 80% increased productivity (taking those stats at face value).