The rich get richer

Jeff Bezos recently became the richest person on earth.

Bezos, head of the online retail behemoth Amazon, saw his wealth jump by $10 billion in just the past month to now more than $90 billion. That’s a stunning leap. But what’s truly stunning is that Bezos and the next two wealthiest Americans, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, together now own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population combined.

The rich are getting richer.

When Forbes first started compiling their famous list of the 400 wealthiest Americans in 1982, just $75 million would get you ranked. Even after accounting for inflation, that’s still less than $200 million in today’s dollars. These days, the price of admission is a record $2 billion — more than 10 times higher.

This group of just 400 multi-billionaires owns a combined $2.68 trillion. And it’s more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the U.S. population, an estimated 204 million people. That’s more people than the populations of Canada and Mexico combined.

The median family owns about $80,000 in wealth, excluding durable consumer goods like cars and appliances. This figure is essentially unchanged from 1983, when the Federal Reserve first started tracking household assets using a uniform survey. In other words, despite 30 years of economic growth, the typical American family has barely seen a budge in their economic standing.

About one in five households lives in “underwater nation,” with either zero or negative wealth. That figure is even higher for black and Latino households, the result of decades of discrimination. 

Wealth is consolidating into fewer and fewer hands.