I think the excessive use of absolute numbers in this article does the author and readers a disservice. It's like describing a chess game and saying "after five moves and fifty million possible games,..."
Yes, it's worth noting that the wealth at the top increased faster than the wealth at the bottom (7% > 6%). And it compounds so that alone can increase the wealth gap.
Especially as a "new record" threshold in nominal dollars.
"January 1st: Record for highest Gregorian calendar year smashed, with upstart 2026 snatching the title from former champ 2025! Our panel of experts analyzes what this completely unexpected shakeup means for Time, and how it may impact you and your family."
What we should be tracking and concerned-about is the proportional distribution of the total wealth among groups, which the article touches upon here:
> The top 1% held 29% of total household wealth in the second quarter, compared with 28% in 2000.
> The top 10% held 67% of total household wealth in the quarter while the bottom 90% held 33%.
like % of people with:
- a washing machine
- access to clean water
- more than one car or house
- measures of access to health care, mental health care, etc
I think there might be increases or declines most people don't realize
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.
A lot of the time I'd prefer to see "HDI recalculated without income" because income per capita doesn't seem like a direct indicator of human development. It's more of a proxy measure. Of course, I could say the same thing about how it measures education. Educational outcomes (like highly developed literacy) are better than how many years of schooling someone has. But these better measurements are also probably harder to collect across a broad group of countries.
I hate when only part of the criteria are provided. Arrives like this need a table. If they don't have it, it calls into question whether they should be writing the article.
"The top 1% held 29% of total household wealth in the second quarter ... The top 10% held 67% of total household wealth in the quarter...", so subtracting again, the other 9% has has 38% of total household wealth.
When the SV techbros in the top 10% say "eat the rich", they're volunteering themselves to be on the menu too. Don't let 'em say otherwise.
When people talk about the 1% they almost always mean the 0.1%>
Just 0.001% hold 3 times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
Like, both of those things can’t be true. If it’s fake money, why do we care that some people have a ton of it? If Tesla is only worth as much as GM, Musk’s share of it is only worth $11 billion, not $200 billion+. Even if you confiscate that it’ll run the federal government for less than a day.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
Despite the recent faster growth at the top, the total shares of wealth held by the upper echelon has remained fairly stable for decades. The top 1% held 29% of total household wealth in the second quarter, compared with 28% in 2000. The top 10% held 67% of total household wealth in the quarter while the bottom 90% held 33%.
As an extreme case, let's look at the top 3 billionaires in 2000 and 2025 respectively.
2000 Gates, Ellison, Allen $135 billion vs. $42.0 trillion ≈0.32 %
2025 Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg $957 billion vs. $172.9 trillion ≈0.55 %
top 0.1% $23T (those with $46M)
top 1% $52T
top 10% $113T (those with $2M)
Can we reach the end state where they just have 100% and society collapses? It's just painful and frankly inhumane, to let this last part drag out for so long.