Median Wealth In The U.S. Falls (As Too Much Goes To The Rich)

 

The following is part of an article from Daniel Orton at Newsweek:

The typical American has suffered a major decline in wealth since the start of the decade, even as the United States has continued to create millionaires at a remarkable pace, according to UBS’ Global Wealth Report 2026.

UBS found that inflation-adjusted median wealth per adult in the U.S. fell significantly between 2020 and 2025, while average wealth per adult increased, underscoring a growing divide between households in the middle and those at the top of the wealth ladder.

The distinction is crucial. Median wealth reflects the assets held by people in the middle of the wealth distribution and is often viewed as a better measure of the financial position of a typical household. Average wealth, by contrast, can be heavily influenced by gains among the wealthiest Americans.

Despite the decline for the median American, the U.S. remains one of the wealthiest countries in the world. UBS estimates average wealth per adult at $696,277, the second-highest level among the markets surveyed. Yet median wealth stands at only $68,998, highlighting the extent to which wealth is concentrated among a relatively small share of households. . . .

For middle-class Americans, the findings suggest that the benefits of rising asset prices have not been evenly distributed. While stock markets and other financial assets have helped boost overall wealth figures, many households have not experienced comparable gains after accounting for inflation. The result is a situation in which the country is becoming wealthier on paper while the financial position of the median American has deteriorated.

The divide is reflected in the report’s measure of wealth inequality. The U.S. recorded a wealth Gini coefficient of 0.77, the sixth-highest among the 56 markets analyzed. The measure, which tracks how concentrated wealth is within a population, indicates that a relatively small share of households holds a disproportionate share of the country’s assets.

UBS also found that the U.S. ranks second in average wealth but only 28th in median wealth, one of the clearest indications in the report that gains have been concentrated among wealthier households.

The Ancient Greeks Knew What Trump Doesn't - Vast Wealth Inequality Hurts A Republic

This thought-provoking post is by David Lay Williams (professor of political science at DePaul University) in The New York Times: 

Ever since Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, people have been trying to grasp the scale of his incomprehensible fortune.

Some have noted that a stack of $100 bills amounting to $1 trillion would extend 679 miles high. The economist Steven Durlauf has observed that John D. Rockefeller’s wealth at one point equaled about 1.5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product and that Mr. Musk’s wealth now amounts to at least twice as much, at more than 3 percent. It may not escape New York Knicks fans that even Jalen Brunson, who makes about $39 million per year, would need to play more than 25,000 seasons to accumulate that kind of money.

But of all the numbers I’ve seen, the one that struck me most forcefully was a calculation in The Times that Mr. Musk’s net worth is five million times as large as that of the average American family.

As a historian of political thought, I immediately thought of Plato, the first Western philosopher to really grapple with economic inequality. In his “Laws,” through the character of the Athenian Stranger, Plato contended that in a thriving republic, if anyone acquired more than four times the wealth of the poorest citizens, he should donate the surplus to the city. Not five million times the wealth of the typical family — four times the wealth of the poorest.

To be sure, it is difficult to imagine how a modern economy would operate with Plato’s proposed constraints on wealth acquisition. But it is not hard for a modern reader to understand the concerns that led him to his radical proposal.

Plato grew up in Athens, a city that once was nearly torn apart, as Plutarch wrote, by the “disparity between the rich and the poor.” It was saved by a heroic lawgiver, Solon, who canceled all the debts of the poor, to the great chagrin of the rich. And in Plato’s youth, as the city fought the Peloponnesian War, it suffered three successive class-based civil wars — an oligarchic revolution of the rich against the poor, followed by a democratic revolution of the poor against the rich, followed by yet another oligarchic revolution.

It’s no wonder that when Socrates reflected on inequality in Plato’s “Republic,” he observed that a state characterized by significant wealth disparity is not a state at all but rather “two states, the one of poor, the other of rich men, and they are living on the same spot and always conspiring against one another.”

For Plato, the source of inequality was a disease of the soul that the Greeks called pleonexia — a kind of insatiable greed. In Plato’s “Gorgias,” Socrates likened this condition to a leaky jug: No matter how much water one pours into it, it will demand more. For some, the desire for money extends only so far as is necessary to cover their needs; for others, the desire is infinite. Plato likened those insatiable souls to slaves who are ruled by their desires.

Someone consumed with his unquenchable desires comes to love himself far beyond what he can feel for the rest of humanity. He was, for Plato, “a poor judge of what is just and good and noble,” because he would always treat his desires as more valuable even than the truth. As a consequence, Plato wrote, “it is impossible that those who become very rich also become good.”

Plato’s fears about insatiable greed have been vindicated by Mr. Musk, who has already set his sights on $10 trillion. He has confirmed Plato’s concerns about the moral failures of the superrich by characterizing empathy as “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” With his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, he put the U.S. Agency for International Development program “into the wood chipper,” as he gleefully put it, contributing to the deaths of an estimated 600,000 people. Such carnage is a predictable outcome of a society that has chosen to place no upper limits on wealth.

Plato was acutely aware that ideal solutions, such as his 4-to-1 wealth ratio, are impossible to carry out where great inequality already exists. But he did not encourage legislators and citizens to throw up their hands in surrender. Rather, he urged citizens (including the few rich ones with a “sense of fairness”) to do what they could to level society, starting by shaming those with excessive fortunes. He stressed that true poverty “consists not in a lessening of one’s property but in an increase of one’s avarice.”

Only by teaching the evils of extreme greed can society begin to restore the healthy balance of wealth necessary for a thriving republic.

The Vast (And Growing) Wealth Inequality Must Be Fixed Before It Destroys Our Democracy

Economist Paul Krugman warns about the huge wealth gap in the United States and its danger to our democracy: 

On Sunday Donald Trump celebrated his 80^th birthday with a cage match on the White House lawn. The match and the events that surrounded it — especially the press conference with UFC fighters, shown above, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial — were a desecration of America’s capital, whose monuments and buildings have always endeavored to represent small-r republican virtues. The whole affair was an affront to the values on which this nation was founded and also unspeakably vulgar.

That last criticism may strike some readers as elitist and trivial. Yet the vulgarity that is the hallmark of Trump and his surrounding circle of oligarchs is a symptom of something not at all trivial: The collapse of social norms. As I argued yesterday, these norms historically played a key role in mitigating abuses of power and privilege during the Gilded Age, the last time America suffered from extreme income and wealth inequality (though not nearly as extreme as what we have now).

Norms matter. In his classic book The Theory of the Leisure Class — published in 1899, at the apogee of the Gilded Age — Thorstein Veblen famously argued that much of the behavior of his era’s elite was driven not by the desire to enjoy life but by the desire to impress others. Partly they did this through conspicuous consumption. Thus they built lavish mansions staffed by legions of servants.

However, members of the Gilded Age elite didn’t solely aim to display their wealth. They also tried to appear respectable. There were surely many private affairs and betrayals we will never know about. But the important point is that the super-wealthy of that era presented to the American public an image of being responsible members of society.

The contrast with the public behavior of Trump’s band of uber-wealthy is startling.

In addition to modeling upstanding behavior, the extremely rich of the Gilded Age were expected to have, or pretend to have, some virtues that were part of the aristocratic ideal, including a sense of noblesse oblige displayed by good works. 

Today’s oligarchs, by contrast, have largely given up on the old norms of social and individual responsibility. They give very little money to good causes and their vulgar taste reflects their in-your-face attitude towards the public. In our current hyper-Gilded Age, extreme vulgarity and the decline of philanthropy are really different aspects of the same phenomenon: the rise of an elite so disconnected from ordinary Americans that it feels no need to even appear to be honorable.

So in a real sense we are living in the midst of a reenactment of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic, not a second American Gilded Age. No, I’m not one of those men who thinks about ancient Rome all the time. But there are some obvious parallels.

While the causes of the decline of republican government and Rome’s eventual transition to one-man rule were doubtless complex, there is broad consensus among historians that a key factor was the emergence of extreme inequality. A handful of men became incredibly wealthy from the spoils of Rome’s eastern conquests, and their wealth and power eventually became too great for the rules of constitutional, republican government to contain. Sound uncomfortably familiar?

The death throes of the Republic went on for many years. Politicians declared their rivals enemies of the state, deployed violent gangs to disrupt the rule of law, established temporary dictatorships, and more. The installation of Augustus as emperor in 27 BC was just the final act.

And during this long twilight of constitutional government, one of the ways the extremely wealthy and powerful sought both to demonstrate their wealth and to curry favor with the mob was by sponsoring gladiatorial games.

Voters Say The Wealth Gap Is Too Large And Taxes Are Too Low For Billionaires

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 3rd and 6th of a nationwide sample of 1,560 registered voters, with a 3 point margin of error.

The Wealth/Income Gap Is Wide - And Growing Much Wider Under Trump/Republicans

 The following is part of an article by Shannon Pettypiece at NBC News:

How’s the economy?

Not bad if you’re rich.

Demand for luxury yachts and private jets is surging thanks to last year’s tax law. Sales of $10 million-plus mansions are booming as stocks hit new highs. And the wealthy and powerful will get to enjoy a new ballroom for galas at the White House.

What if you aren’t rich?

The typical American can’t afford the median-priced home. A new car is out of reach for many, with the average monthly payment exceeding $700. Food banks are seeing a growing number of people skipping meals because they can’t afford groceries, and more middle-class Americans are selling their plasma to make ends meet.

The divide between rich and poor in America is the widest it’s been in at least a generation — and growing. The amount of wealth held by the top 1% increased at more than double the rate of the bottom 90% in the first nine months of last year, according to Federal Reserve figures. At the very top, Elon Musk’s fortune is approaching that of legendary 19th-century businessman John D. Rockefeller when looked at as a share of the overall U.S. economy.

A variety of factors have shaped the struggles of everyday Americans and fueled the gains of the wealthy: The pandemic disrupted the housing market, making it harder to afford a home. Stocks have surged, driven by enthusiasm over AI. Manufacturing has waned, hiring has slipped and costs continue to rise.

President Donald Trump’s policies are amplifying these trends. One year into his second term, his administration has cut programshelping lower-income households while advancing policies benefiting the wealthy and corporations. He’s signed legislation to cut food stamps and Medicaid benefits and put new restrictions on low-income housing assistance and student loans. To cope with higher costs from tariffs, he has suggested Americans buy fewer dolls for their children.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has given billions of dollars in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy and loosened regulations on banks while easing rules around cryptocurrency, which he’s benefited from personally. . . .

What’s clear is that the divide between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else has been growing for decades — and shows no sign of slowing. The ramifications of Trump’s policies widening this divide could go beyond Americans’ bank accounts, shaping the political landscape ahead of November’s midterm elections, with multiple polls showing a growing number of voters disapproving of Trump’s handling of the economy.

For many people, these trends are shaking a core belief: that it is possible to get ahead in America. . . .

Americans born in the 1980s were less likely to earn more than their parents, compared with those born in the 1940s, a 2016 study by Stanford University economists found. Today’s households are also facing higher costs, including spiking health care premiums and deductibles, as well as child care expenses.

These struggles are not equally felt. As of last October, the top 1% held 32% of America’s wealth, up from about 23% in 1990. The wealth held by white households far outstrips that of Black and Hispanic households.

Slowing wage gains have contributed to the widening gap between rich and poor. Since 1979, wages for the bottom 90% of earners have increased 44%, while wages for the top 1% of earners have risen more than 180%, a 2024 report from the Economic Policy Institute found. . . .

The Trump administration’s regulatory cuts, along with tax breaks for corporations in last year’s tax law, sent stocks to record highs last year. Those heavily invested in technology companies are gaining the most — just seven tech companies, including Amazon and Meta, were responsible for 40% of the gains last year in the S&P 500.

While most Americans have some investment in the stock market, a disproportionate share of gains have gone to the wealthy, with the richest 10% of households owning around 90% of all stocks, according to Federal Reserve data.

Those same households were responsible for around half of all consumer spending in 2025, the highest rate since at least 1989, according to Moody’s Analytics. Wealthy households also buoyed the housing market and new car sales over the past year. Walmart said last month that most of its growth was coming from households making more than $100,000. . . .

Among the ways Trump has affected Americans’ bottom line is through his tariffs, which have driven up retail prices, said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who worked in the George W. Bush administration. Higher prices disproportionately affect those with less disposable income to absorb price hikes. . . .

The slowing job market is putting significant pressure on households. Wages aren’t rising as quickly as in recent years, and employers have pulled back on hiring. The U.S. added just 584,000 jobs in 2025, the worst year for hiring since Covid. And most of the growth was driven by a handful of industries, like health care and education.

Most In U.S. Want Government To Reduce The Wealth Gap

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 6th and 9th of a nationwide sample of 1,563 adults (including 1,405 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters. 

Most Want The Government To Reduce The Wealth Inequality In The U.S.

 

The charts above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 2nd and 5th of a nationwide sample of 1,551 adults (including 1,389 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.

A Wealth Tax For Super-Rich Is Not A New Idea (Thomas Paine & Ben Franklin Supported it)

Vanessa Williamson and Jeremy Bearer-Friend at MS NOW give us a little history on the idea of a wealth tax for the super-rich. It may surprise you, but it's not a new idea.

The “overgrown influence” of extreme wealth, wrote Thomas Paine in 1792, was “one of the principal sources of corruption at elections.” More than 200 years later, billionaires line up behind the president at his inauguration and the wealthiest Americans exert colossal influence over U.S. politics. Our deeply oligarchic times have vindicated the warning from Paine, whose pamphlet “Common Sense” helped spark the American Revolution. Now we should consider Paine’s solution to oligarchy: a wealth tax with a top marginal rate of 100%.

A tax rate of 100% on billionaires is not a break from American tradition, but a return to it. Paine was far from alone in seeing the extreme consolidation of wealth as an intrinsic danger to republican government. America’s founders saw a rough economic equality among citizens — what Benjamin Franklin called a “happy mediocrity” — as a prerequisite for political freedom. The danger, early Americans believed, was that the rich could dominate the political sphere and turn the functioning of government to their private benefit, making government office a lucrative proposition.

As a committee of Pennsylvania radicals (including Franklin) wrote in an early draft of the 1776 state constitution, “an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few Individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness, of Mankind; and therefore every free State hath a Right by its Laws to discourage the Possession of such Property.” Although this was ultimately dropped from the final text, the power of the state government to limit wealth was considered as part of the state’s Bill of Rights: a protection for individual freedom.

Paine would go further in his book “The Rights of Man,” published in two parts in the early 1790s, by designing a tax policy to prevent the consolidation of wealth. Paine proposed an annual tax on the returns to wealth with a top marginal rate of 100%. “There ought to be a limit to property,” Paine argued, when that property was far above the amount one could earn through personal effort or could use to care for a family. “The aristocracy has screened itself too much,” he wrote, and this tax would “restore a part of the lost equilibrium.”

The design of Paine’s tax is straightforward. He wanted to tax the annual financial return on wealth — what he referred to as its “yearly value.” He proposed a series of highly progressive tax brackets with rates rising from 1.25% to 100%. As his rates increased, only the money received beyond the previous bracket would be taxed at the higher rate. In 2020 dollars, the first roughly $100,000 in annual returns would be tax-free. At the other end of the spectrum, the 100% rate only applied to annual revenue over about $49 million. At a 5% rate of return, a revenue amount of $49 million comes from an estate of about $1 billion, so Paine’s top rate applies, roughly, to billionaires.

Two proposals from senators — Elizabeth Warren’s “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” and Bernie Sanders’ “Tax on Extreme Wealth” —share common ambitions with Paine’s idea. But Paine’s proposal has one unique advantage: Once enacted, it would automatically capture billionaires’ future windfalls without the need for new legislation. The day after the 2024 election, the 10 richest people in the world saw their own total wealth ratchet up by another $64 billion. Even before the election, our research estimates that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would have paid $56 billion in tax year 2021 under Paine’s tax proposal. Elon Musk would have paid $125 billion. Instead, today’s 25 wealthiest people pay an effective tax rate of 3.4%.

Paine fundamentally understood that the economy must protect, not undermine, the functioning of republican government. Between 1980 and 2012, the cost of a congressional campaign grew by a factor of seven; in the same period, the cost of a presidential campaign grew 13-fold. As of 2018, the median member of Congress had roughly eight times the wealth of the median American household — and 40 times the wealth of the median Black American household. When the preferences of the rich and the poor differ, it is almost always the views of the rich that become public policy.

Paine devoted himself to the American patriot cause because he believed in government by the people, not by the wealthy and connected few. He recognized that the economy and the polity are inextricably linked and that citizens cannot have an equal voice in politics while wealth is extremely unequal. If we are going to stop the entrenchment of an American oligarchy, a 100% tax on billionaires is just common sense.

Americans Are Upset With Economic Unfairness And Power Of The Rich

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between October 31st and November 3rd of a nationwide sample of 1,656 adults (including 1,475 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.4 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters.

The Beginning Of A Fascist Oligarchy

From former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

In what was billed as his “farewell address,” President Biden warned America that the nation is succumbing to an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy, and of the “dangerous concentration of power” they pose to democratic ideals.

He’s right, of course.

Fascism starts with the Trump derriere-kissing we’re now witnessing by the wealthiest people in America, who own the biggest megaphones and thereby determine what information Americans get. What they get back from Trump is raw power to do whatever they want.

Elon Musk — the richest person in the world — controls X, which under his leadership has become a cesspool of lies and bigotry.

Musk has made it clear that his platform’s main role during the upcoming Trump regime will be to back whatever Trump chooses to do and criticize Trump’s critics with more lies and bigotry.

Jeff Bezos — the second-richest person in America — owns Amazon. His Prime Video just announced it will spend a whopping $40 million for a documentary about Melania Trump, for which she is an executive producer, and stream it on Amazon Prime. 

What else will Amazon promote or censor, to curry favor with Trump? 

Bezos also owns The Washington Post. Just before the election, he killed a Postendorsement of Kamala Harris. Earlier this month, a Post cartoonist quit after the newspaper spiked a cartoon showing Bezos and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg kneeling before Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg — the third-richest person in America — owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. He’s sucking up to Trump by ridding his platforms of content moderation so that they, too, can amplify Trump’s lies and bigotry.

My friends, none of this has anything to do with freedom of speech. It has everything to do with the power of money. 

The three richest Americans want to decide what the rest of us will know about the coming Trump regime. 

Concentrated wealth is the enemy of democracy. As the great jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said, “America has a choice. We can either have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy. But we cannot have both.”

As we slouch into the darkness of Trump II, America needs people and institutions that speak truth to power, not align themselves with it. 

When we the people regain power, three reforms are critically necessary to begin to tame the oligarchy:

1. 1. X, Amazon, Meta, and other giant tech media platforms must either be busted up or treated as public utilities, responsible to the public. 

2. 2. Hugely wealthy individuals must not be permitted to own critical media. 

3. 3. Large accumulations of individual wealth must be taxed.