Wealth Inequality in America

there's a chart I saw recently that I can't get out of my head a Harvard Business professor and economist asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth was distributed in the United States this is what they said they thought it was dividing the country into five RUF groups of the top bottom and middle three 20% groups they asked people how they thought the wealth in this country was divided then he asked them what they thought was the ideal distribution and 92% that's at least nine out of ten of them said it should be more

like this in other words more equitable than they think it is now that fact is telling admittedly the notion that most Americans know that the system is already skewed unfairly but what's most interesting to me is the reality compared to our perception the ideal is as far removed from our perception of reality as the actual distribution is from what we think exists in this country so ignore the ideal for a moment here's what we think it is again and here is the actual distribution shockingly skewed not only to the bottom 20 percent and the next

20 percent the bottom forty percent of Americans barely have any of the wealth I mean it's hard to even see them on the chart but the top 1% has more of the country's wealth than nine out of ten Americans believe the entire top 20 percent should have mind-blowing but let's look at it another way because I find this chart kind of difficult to wrap my head around instead let's reduce the 311 million Americans to just a representative one hundred people make it simple here they are teachers coaches firefighters construction workers engineers doctors lawyers some investment

bankers a CEO maybe a celebrity or two now let's line them up according to their wealth poorest people on the Left wealthiest on the right just a steady row of folks based on their net worth will colour-code them like we did before based on which percent quintile they fall into now let's reduce the total wealth of the United States which was roughly fifty four trillion dollars in 2009 to this symbolic pile of cash and let's distribute it among our 100 Americans well here's socialism all the wealth of the country distributed equally we all know that

won't work we need to encourage people to work and work hard to achieve that good ol American Dream and keep our country moving forward so here's that ideal we asked everyone about something like this curve this isn't too bad we've got some incentive as the wealthiest folks are now about 10 to 20 times better off than the poorest Americans but hey even the poor folks aren't actually poor since the poverty line has stayed almost entirely off the chart we have a super healthy middle class with a smooth transition into wealth and yes Republicans and Democrats

alike chose this curve nine out of ten people 92 percent said this was a nice ideal distribution of America's wealth but let's move on this is what people think America's wealth distribution actually looks like not as equitable clearly but for me even this still looks pretty great yes the poorest 20 to 30 percent are starting to suffer quite a lot compared to the ideal and the middle class is certainly struggling more than they were while the rich and wealthy are making roughly a hundred times that of the poorest Americans and in about ten times that

of the still healthy middle class sadly this isn't even close to the reality here is the actual distribution of wealth in America the poorest Americans don't even register they're down to pocket change and the middle class is barely distinguishable from the poor in fact even the rich between the top ten and twenty percentile are worse off only the top ten percent are better off and how much better off so much better off that the top two to five percent are actually off the chart at this scale and the top 1% this guy well his stack

of money stretches 10 times higher than we can show here's his stack of cash rhe stacked all by itself this is the top 1% we've been hearing so much about so much green in his pockets that I have to give him a whole new column of his own because he won't fit on my chart 1% of America has 40% of all the nation's wealth the bottom 80% 8 out of every 10 people or 80 out of these hundred only has 7 percent between them and this has only gotten worse in the last 20 to 30

years while the richest 1% take home almost a quarter of the national income today in 1976 they took home only nine percent meaning their share of income has nearly tripled in the last thirty years the top 1% owned half the country stocks bonds and mutual funds the bottom 50% of Americans own only half a percent of these investments which means they aren't investing they're just scraping by I'm sure many of these wealthy people have worked very hard for their money but do you really believe that the CEO is working three hundred and eighty times harder

than his average employee not his lowest paid employee not the janitor but the average earner in his company the average worker needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO makes in one hour we certainly don't have to go all the way to socialism to find something that is fair for hardworking Americans we don't even have to achieve what most of us consider might be ideal all we need to do is wake up and realize that the reality in this country is not at all what we think it is you