Enormous wealth gap between top 1% and rest of Americans continues to grow – Asheville Citizen Times
“A recent Asheville Citizen Times headline read, “Top 1% richer than the entire middle class.” According to the article, 30 years ago, the middle class — the middle 60% of American households based upon income — held twice as much wealth as the top 1%, but today the top 1% hold more wealth than the entire middle class. It seems not many oats passed through the horse and on to the sparrows.
“The article is based on Federal Reserve data that is available on its website. The data shows that as of mid-2023, the top 1% of Americans amassed $45.78 trillion in wealth. The ultra-elite of that group, the top one-tenth of 1% — think Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk — account for $18.63 trillion. The overwhelming majority of Americans — those in the 0-90% range — hold $45.38 trillion. In other words, the top 1% of Americans are worth more than the bottom 90%. To make the disparity even more stark, the combined wealth of the bottom half of Americans is $3.64 trillion, which is one-fifth the wealth of the top one-tenth of 1%. To put that into context, if a thousand people who are representative of wealth distribution in America were in a room, one person in the room would be worth five times more than 500 others combined.”