Failing for a Generation

VoxEU covers the new Piketty, Saez & Zucman paper. Tidbits: 
"The total flow of income reported by households in survey or tax data adds up to barely 60% of the national income recorded in the national accounts, with this gap increasing over the past several decades.  [Footnote 1: Many important forms of income, such as fringe benefits of employees, retained profits and taxes paid by corporations, or imputed rent of homeowners, are part of U.S. national income but are not included in individual survey or tax data.] ...
An economy that fails to deliver growth for half of its people for an entire generation is bound to generate discontent with the status quo and a rejection of establishment politics. ...
To understand how unequal the US is today, consider the following fact. In 1980, adults in the top 1% earned on average 27 times more than bottom 50% of adults. Today they earn 81 times more. This ratio of 1 to 81 is similar to the gap between the average income in the US and the average income in the world’s poorest countries, among them the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Burundi. Another alarming trend evident in this data is that the increase in income concentration at the top in the US over the past 15 years is due to a boom in capital income. It looks like the working rich who drove the upsurge in income concentration in the 1980s and 1990s are either retiring to live off their capital income or passing their fortunes onto heirs."