Project RAND (Research ANd Development) was started in 1946 by the American military and the Douglas Aircraft Company. It was to connect military planning with scientific research. Two years later RAND was incorporated as an independent, nonprofit organization and earned a reputation of being centrist, technocratic, and establishment-oriented.

A paper published by the Rand Corporation in 2023 had a fundamental conclusion that U.S. economic growth since the mid-1970s has been distributed far less evenly than in the postwar decades. Had the 1975 income distribution been maintained, the bottom 90% of workers would have received:

• $3.9 trillion more in income in 2023 alone; and
• $79 trillion more cumulatively from 1975 to 2023, expressed in 2023 dollars.

The $79 trillion figure (C$112 trillion) is an estimate of what the bottom 90% would have earned if they had kept the same share of national income they received in 1975.