Some caveats on that Saez wealth-inequality chart: First, of course, is that it's missing almost 10% of the households and 50% of the wealth. Second, what a t

Some caveats on that Saez wealth-inequality chart: First, of course, is that it's missing almost 10% of the households and 50% of the wealth. Second, what a typical "household" in the U.S. is has changed substantially since the halcyon days of 1979. They're smaller, and they have more old people and fewer young people[1]. Unsurprisingly, wealth disparities are amplified with age: A young doctor loaded with debt is probably much poorer in "real" net worth terms than his groundskeeper neighbor. But as an old doctor he will be much wealthier. Similar math applies as households are increasingly headed by singles as opposed to couples. Regardless of whether society is getting more or less equitable in "wealth distribution" for the average Joe, these demographic changes would show up as movement in this chart. Third, I suspect that Saez did not account for the value (admittedly subject to the whims of Congress) of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Their political stability is at least as reliable as the stock market, and again, as society ages, more usable "wealth" is tied to them. Finally, a massively lower interest rate environment (look up rates in the '70's!) makes it much more attractive for the bottom 90% to use credit for day-to-day living rather than keeping large cash buffers around. The same logic applies on a grander scale with housing and education: Even post-financial crisis, the "90%" can afford to leverage themselves much more dramatically than in 1979. That's more debt and lower wealth today, but presuming they can deleverage over time (as households did post '08), there's no reason to assume it must be a deep problem of inequality. [1] http://web.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgi-bin/siepr/?q=system/files/shared/pubs/papers/pdf/09-01.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgi-bin/siepr/?q=system/...