The Rich and the Rest: The Growing Concentration of Wealth

摘要

A century ago, battles against what angry Americans called plutocracy—rule by the rich—raged all across the United States. Those battles would eventually leave the world's first mass middle class by the 1950s. Today, that plutocracy is back and that middle class is hurting. What about tomorrow? In the twenty-first century, will Americans continue to tolerate enormous disparities in the property people own and the wealth individuals have accumulated? In the United States currently, the most-affluent 1% of the population holds more wealth than the entire bottom 90% combined, according to U.S. Federal Reserve research. The most-honored captains of industry— Fortune 500 CEOs—routinely make more in a morning than their average employees earn in a year. Will our grandchildren live amid similar disparities? That future, most contemporary analysts would agree, seems likely.