$50 Trillion Moved From the Working Class to the 1% | Ben Johnson, Inequality by Design

$50 trillion has moved from the working class to the top 1% of Americans over the past four decades. Clara Mattei talks with Ben Johnson, co-author of Inequality by Design, about how the rules were written to make that happen.

Drawing on four decades of public data, Ben Johnson and economist Dr. Ryan Mattson trace the widening gap between what the economy produces and what working people take home. A federal minimum wage frozen at $7.25 since 2009. A purchasing-power gap between minimum and average wages that has grown past $22 an hour. GDP figures that climb year after year, with the gains collecting at the very top. According to a RAND Corporation study, about $3,700 a year has left the pocket of every American below the top 1%, every year, for forty years. The book grounds these numbers in the lives of real people, then follows the policy choices that built the gap.

The conversation widens to the long view. Johnson compares today's inequality to Bourbon France in the years before its revolution and to Tsarist Russia in its final decade, reading the historical record of where extreme concentration of wealth has led before. They look at worker-owned alternatives like Mondragón, the Spanish cooperative that employs tens of thousands and shares its profits, and they close on whether new technology and AI spread opportunity widely or gather it into even fewer hands.

Ben Johnson holds undergraduate degrees in Russian and international relations and spent years as an emergency medical technician, which put him face to face with the families behind the statistics. He is now a member of the FREE Assembly. Inequality by DesignHow a Rigged Economy Fractures America and What We Can Do About It is available now from Upriver Press.

As of June 2026, Ben Johnson is running for Tulsa City Council District 9.

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#Inequality #Economics #Capitalism #Meritocracy #minimumwage