What % of the wealth any group owns doesn't matter. It's a meaningless statistic, and the government should be blind to it. The distribution of income is not mandated by the Constitution.
Money is not a zero-sum game over time, the money supply grows. People in every bracket live different lives than when I was a kid in the 1970s. If you wish to say that X% more wealth is controlled by the top 1%, and is "gone" from the lower %s compared to some point in history, then demonstrate how this has impacted lives. You cannot complain that the poor cannot afford, say, broadband, when in the 70s there was no such thing in the first place. If home ownership numbers are different, if the square feet per capita is different, cell phone ownership (only the super rich had car-phones in their limos in 1970 (if even that)), etc, ad nauseum, then you cannot compare economic figures WRT to lifestyles (all that matters) over time without converting this increase in "value" into dollars.
I'll argue that even the poor wage earners are better off now than in 1971 (or '61, or '51) using any reasonable measure of how they live, and what they have.If they have better lives, then they "earn more" even if the % of wealth they own doesn't show this.
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"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." — Thomas Paine
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