...For the 117 million U.S. adults in the bottom half of the income distribution, growth has been non-existent for a generation while at the top of the ladder it has been extraordinarily strong. And this stagnation of national income accruing at the bottom is not due to population aging.... Government redistribution has offset only a small fraction of the increase in pre-tax inequality.... Compare the average bottom 50 percent pre-tax incomes in the United States and France. In sharp contrast with the United States, in France the bottom 50 percent of real (inflation-adjusted) pre-tax incomes grew by 32 percent from 1980 to 2014, at approximately the same rate as national income per adult.... The bottom 50 percent of income earners make more in France than in the United States even though average income per adult is still 35 percent lower in France than in the United States (partly due to differences in standard working hours).... Diverging trends in the distribution of pre-tax income across France and the United States—two advanced economies subject to the same forces of technological progress and globalization—show that working-class incomes are not bound to stagnate...

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