Game over, man: the Fed won.
As the Economist reports [4], according to a new paper by authors at liberal bastion UC Berkeley and the LSE, US inequality in wealth is approaching record levels (actually it already surpassed it as reported long ago [5]).
"The authors examine the share of total wealth held by the bottom 90% of families relative to those at the very top. In the late 1920s the bottom 90% held just 16% of America’s wealth—considerably less than that held by the top 0.1%, which controlled a quarter of total wealth just before the crash of 1929. From the beginning of the Depression until well after the end of the second world war, the middle class’s share of total wealth rose steadily, thanks to collapsing wealth among richer households, broader equity ownership, middle-class income growth and rising rates of home-ownership. From the early 1980s, however, these trends have reversed. The top 0.1% (consisting of 160,000 families worth $73m on average) hold 22% of America’s wealth, just shy of the 1929 peak—and almost the same share as the bottom 90% of the population."
That was as of 2013. By now the wealth of the top 0.1% is not only well above that of the "bottom 90%" but higher than it has ever been.
Thanks Uncle Ben and Aunt Janet.
[6]
In other news, Janet Yellen, thoruoughly stumped by the causes of America's record wealth inequality [7], advises America's poor, already drowning in debt, to please build assets in order to "rise above."
