Rob Larson Many people are vaguely aware that the rich have too much money, but they may not realize the tremendous scale of the issue. The World Inequality Database (WID), a consortium of economists whose work I rely on in the book, have current estimates of world wealth concentration that are truly eye-watering. In the United States, in 2021, the richest 1 percent of households owned 34.9 percent of the national wealth; worldwide, the 1 percent owns 40.5 percent of all wealth. In country after country, the top one in one hundred households owns around a third of whatever there is to own. Even more consistently, the bottom 50 percent has between about 3 percent and -3 percent of national wealth — in other words, “nothing,” to use a sophisticated economics concept.
More surprising, perhaps, is that the same richest 1 percent took home 27 percent of world per-capita wealth growth from 1980 to 2017. That’s a big deal, since liberals and conservatives alike argue that the best way to address poverty or inequality is to grow the economy — but it turns out that this has left the ruling class with an even more lopsided share over the past several decades.
In the United States, in 2021, the richest 1 percent of households owned 34.9 percent of the national wealth; worldwide, the 1 percent owns 40.5 percent of all wealth.
Finally, one of the most important things I try to draw attention to in the book is the connection between the 1 percent and the corporate economy. We tend to say corporations are unaccountable, and it’s true they’re not accountable to us — we don’t get mass manufacturing layoffs, bank mergers, and tech platforms selling our data because those things are popular with the public. But corporations are accountable to their owners — the major stockholders, who hold ownership shares in the great global corporate empires. Research by Edward Wolff found that in 2016, the top 1 percent owned 40 percent of all corporate stock, and the top 10 percent owned 84 percent. Today’s big corporate profits pour into the pockets of the already rich, through traditional dividends or through stock buybacks.
