The ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement launched on Sept. 17 and its “We are the 99 percent” campaign highlights that the top 1 percent has fared very well while the 99 percent have not fared so well over the last few decades. (The conservative rebuttal, “We are the 53 percent,” referring to households with positive federal income tax liability, is insultingly flawed and misleading.) OWS’ mantra is easily supported by data, as EPI President Lawrence Mishel highlighted in this week’s economic snapshot.

From 1979 to 2007, the inflation-adjusted pre-tax incomes of the highest-income 1 percent of families (in 2011, the 1 percent are those with incomes exceeding $441,000) increased 224 percent. Think that’s impressive? The incomes of the top 0.1 percent rose 390 percent. So where does that leave the rest of us?

For the bottom 90 percent of Americans, incomes grew just 5 percent over the same 28-year period. Whether it’s the bottom 90 percent or the OWS folks’ 99 percent, this much is clear: We have a winner-take-all economy and the substantial rise in economic inequality has prevented the vast majority from improving their living standards in line with what was possible. The nation’s not broke, even if the bottom 99 percent are.