Читать книгу Engine of Inequality - Karen Petrou - Страница 20

Unsurprisingly, wealth inequality has gone up as inexorably as that of income. In 1989, the top 1 percent of Americans had 24 percent; by the end of 2019, their share was 33 percent of US wealth, with top 1 percent wealth growing nearly $3 trillion in just the first half of 2019.²⁶ The bottom 50 percent did grow its infinitesimal share of the national wealth pie, bringing it up to 1.5 percent,²⁷ a negligible share and a tiny increase highlighted by President Trump and the Fed even as the wealth of the top 1 percent and the 90 to 99 percent group each grew over the first half of the year by more than the total wealth of the entire bottom 50 percent.²⁸

Before COVID, households in the bottom 50 percent of US wealth had about as much debt as assets, with the bulk of what wealth they have often to be found parked on the street.²⁹ In 2016, the bottom half of the US had less real wealth than it did in 1971.³⁰