15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America

The gap between the top 0.01% and everyone else hasn't been this big since the Roaring Twenties

This chart shows average income of the top 1% as a multiple of average income of the bottom 90% (via The Nation).

Click here for bigger chart >

Half of America owns 2.5% of country's wealth. The top 1% owns a third of it.

Source: Institute for Policy Studies

Half of America owns only 0.5% of America's stocks and bonds. The top 1% owns more than 50%!

Source: Institute for Policy Studies

Look how the wealth gap grown in the past 20 years!

Source: Professor G. William Domhoff

The last two decades were great...if you were a CEO or business owner or banker or trader. Not if you were anyone else.

Real average earnings have not increased in 50 years. That's HALF A CENTURY!

And savings rates have sunk, as Americans borrow money to keep up (though they're rising now)

Despite the myth of social mobility, poor Americans have a SLIM CHANCE of rising to the upper middle class

Source: NBER

Republican tax cuts significantly increased the wealth gap

Source: NYT

And income tax just keeps getting lower and lower for the rich

America redistributes its wealth FAR LESS than other developed countries (via government transfers)

America's income spread is nearly twice the OECD average

Source: Economist

The income gap is NOT growing in other countries, like France

Inequality is worst around Wall Street and Oil Land

Source: The Map Scroll

If you aren't in the top 1% of America's earners, you're pretty much screwed

Normalized to 1979, the top 1% have seen their share of America's income more than double. The bottom 90% have seen their portion shrink.

Source: Afferent Input

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