America's top 0.1% captured two-thirds of all wealth gains in a single quarter
US inequality is getting worse in ways you might not expect
Wealth inequality in the US is accelerating, and the very richest are pulling away even from the merely rich. Federal data show the top 0.1% now hold 15% of all wealth and grabbed two-thirds of the gains between the first and second quarters of 2026, while the middle class's share keeps shrinking. An economist traces the drivers: a less progressive tax code, corporate profits fueled by the AI boom, lapsed ACA subsidies, energy costs, and tariffs that hit ordinary consumers hardest.
Inequality is first of all a social, historical, and political construction.
- megamike
Middle class culture, any culture, can only stand if it is rewarded. In prior times middle class culture was fundamentally supported by the upper classes, who invested in America, creating vast wealth.
They modeled sobriety, hard-work, risk and reward. The working classes modeled the behavior through church and labor guilds, standing together for each other and the nation.
The wealthy have abandoned America, and the working classes have abandoned faith, guilds, and each other. Into that void steps cultural anarchy.
Society requires hard-work, and discipline. It requires accountability, primarily of the wealthy. I tire of prose that lament the loss of culture without holding those accountable who have abandoned their responsibilities.
- pluc
It's ok the US doesn't protest unless your last name is royalty
- andsoitis
> affordability, but growing anger over inequality
When it comes to wealth, the ceiling should be unlimited AND the floor should be high.
- schneems
I think this got killed by the mods. It has 46 points over 2 hours and isn’t on the front page anymore.
The number four story also has 46 votes and is 3 hours old.
- somelamer567
The fish rots from the head.
The rich have greedily and selfishly opted out, and left a massive moral vacuum.
They must be held accountable. And the only way to hold the rich and powerful accountable is to stop them from corrupting the political process. Ban lobbying, undisclosed political donations and concentrations of private media ownership, and society will recover.
- bequanna
Many people I speak with in my generation (millennials) have a growing frustration with sending a large percentage of our paycheck to the already rich Boomers.
This is coupled with their self-centered politics which seem obsessed with them capturing as much wealth as possible and avoiding taxes at the clear expense of younger generations.
- jongjong
The worst part about inequality is that it creates communication barriers which create total deprivation of opportunities. These days, I can't communicate with anyone who might have any opportunities for me. If a person is a good match for my skills and might be a source of opportunities for me, I simply cannot email them, cannot call them, cannot connect to them on any platform. It feels like there are AI bots working behind the scenes maintaining filter bubbles air-tight.
On the other side, literally all the emails I receive, all my social network connections are spam. Like completely irrelevant, generic spam sent by a bot, but not even tailored to me; just generic template 'Dear sir'; my name is not even mentioned.
- throw0101a
While tech bros and Wall Street may get a lot of press of getting lots of money, the recent book The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There seems to show (using IRS data, etc) a large portion of the wealth being held in private hands.
Interview on Bloomberg's Odd Lots:
> In 2014, the economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick were asked by the Treasury to conduct a study on the tax burden of private business owners. It was tricky to figure out how much these sorts of business owners — auto dealers, contractors, the like — actually owed in taxes: After Reagan's 1986 tax reforms, pass-through businesses and other accounting tricks became widespread enough to obscure this class of wealthy Americans hiding in plain sight. The research they conducted led to their new book The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, and one of their central findings is that there are about three million private business owners who have an average wealth of around $25 million. They call this group “Main Street Millionaires” and their influence on the economy and politics in the US is considerable. We speak with Zidar and Zwick today about how they measured the actual number of rich people in America by sifting through reams of tax forms, why income inequality started to rise in tandem with the growing number of pass-through businesses, and how it's possible that the collective revenue of the nation's dentists far exceeds that of t […]