In the U.S. during the three decades after 1979, relates Christopher Hayes, "the top 10 percent captured all of the income gains, while incomes for the bottom 90 percent declined." The U.S. Federal Reserve reports that between 1989 and 2021 the share of the country's wealth the top one percent of the population owned grew from roughly 5 percent to 46 percent. In 2019 the average income of the top 1 percent was $1,614,468; the average income of the bottom 50 percent was $18,425, a factor of 88 times. A 2019 Washington Post article notes that "Income inequality in the United States has hit its highest level since the Census Bureau started tracking it more than five decades ago." The Brookings Institution in its 2022 "World Inequality Report"[ determined that "53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64—accounting for 44% of all workers—qualify as 'low-wage.' Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual earnings are about $18,000." Anthropologist David Harvey reports, "The incredible concentrations of wealth and power that now exist in the upper echelons of capitalism have not been seen since the 1920s. "Indeed," says Piketty, "socioeconomic inequality has increased in all regions of the world since the 1980s."