It began starting in 1970 through to the 1980s.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/blog/2023/03/when-comparing-wages-and-worker-productivity-the-price-measure-matters/

Then in the 1990s is when it flipped.

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/221939/economics/the-two-speed-us-economy-2026/

You can clearly see in 1970 things were in the much more balanced productive state, and we are in an upside down economy. This will not last much longer with AI.

If you want more examples: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Is that graph supposed to say bottom 50%? The top 1% would be included in the top 50% so it makes no sense for the 1% to be a higher value.

Awesome thanks for sharing, and holy WOW this graph is just brutally obvious. This system is genuinely fucking broken beyond belief.

Yea it should say bottom 50% good catch. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tJXjy/1/ https://www.nber.org/digest/feb17/new-evidence-income-inequality

I fixed the image in the post as well.

And this only covers income inequality. As wealth inequality is always greater than income inequality (and income doesn't even cover profits), you've actually only shown the mild case...

I can recommend the latest world inequality report:
https://wir2026.wid.world/

I often say that the 70's were pea. People like to point out all sorts of things that got better from then but its really about we were generally looking to progress then for the last few decades and that kinda stopped. It was a slow decline though so we made some progress but it went from like generally steps forward to 2 steps forward one back to one forward one back and then 1 forward and 2 back and now we are just generally moving backward.