Wealth Distribution
For all but the very wealthy, the American Dream is now an impossibility.
THE ECONOMIC BOMB
Wealth distribution in the United States in the second quarter of 2024. Total Wealth = $160 trillion
Green: bottom 50% Red: 50%-90%
Grey: 90% – 99% Navy: 99%-99.9%
Blue- 0.1%
A nation where half the people
have 2.5% of the wealth is
not
of the people, by the people,and for the people
Breakdown
The people got hit by a double whammy!
1.) Since around 1970 the income of the bottom 10% of wage earners has only risen about 26% while the income of the top 0.1% has grown by 160%. To a large extent that was due to the intentional erosion of policies that had protected workers throughout most of the 20th century.
2.) Then, starting in 1982, the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts for the rich let the rich and powerful keep a whole lot more of their huge incomes.
As a result, the government has diverted $50 trillion from the working class to the rich.
Total wealth of the nation
French economist Thomas Piketty, advocates highly progressive income taxes, like what we had until the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts, and inheritance taxes in order “to reduce inequality and prevent the concentration of wealth from destabilizing society.”
What the Science of Predators and Prey Tells Us About the Morbidly Rich and Working People
Summary:
The article above uses ecological predator-prey dynamics to explain economic inequality, highlighting how policies from 1900-1980 reduced income disparity through progressive taxation, strong unions, and financial regulation. Since the 1980s, the erosion of these policies has enabled the wealthy to extract over $50 trillion from the working class, causing our obscene distribution of wealth.
Wealth of the people could be considered as the median family net worth of $192,000 x 127 million families = $1.92 e5 x 1.27 e8 =2.43 e13 = $24 trillion