While stock market soars to new heights, workers far from recovery. That's policy, not an accident

It's no surprise in this era of sharpened inequalities of income and wealth that a soaring stock market and doubling of corporate profits have not generated all that many cheers from the average American worker. The top 10 percent of the U.S. population owns 81 percent of all investment dollars in stocks and mutual funds. The bottom 90 percent owns the rest, with the bottom 50 percent only owning 0.5 percent.

As perennially pointed out by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, and Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, and the Center on Budget Policy Priorities, the numbers on income and wealth are getting worse. In the recovery from the 2001 recession, the top one percent collected two-thirds of the income gains. This time around, they've taken in 121 percent of gains because income for the bottom 99 percent fell.

As the chart above shows, "real" median household income, that is, inflation-adjusted, is now 8.1 percent below where it was in January 2009.

In his latest column, former Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains what he thinks is going on to make this happen. Read about it below the fold.