The Nature of Wealth

Our tolerance of the severe economic imbalance in the United States may have to do with the slippery use of a single term: wealth. Even Robert Reich¹ is complicit, informing us not too long ago: “The richest 0.1% of Americans control $22 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% control $3.8 trillion in wealth.”^{2 3}

The cat’s out of the bag! America’s poorer half controls nearly $4 trillion in wealth, in other words, quite a lot, in other words, not bad. Except, can we call it wealth?

Wealth is considered a surfeit, over and above what’s needed, pleasant for sure, but superfluous, precisely what America’s richest 0.1% have plenty of. These 134,578 households — each worth $38 million or more, with an average annual income of $3.3 million⁴ — own opulent residences, spacious holiday homes, private jets, stock portfolios, corporate equities, mutual funds, multiple bank accounts (no overdrafts), furs, jewels, costly perfumes, artwork, yachts, perhaps a collection of vintage automobiles. Some breed racehorses. Exciting investment opportunities are laid before them as a matter of course. On a whim, they have fresh croissants and bottles of rare wines shipped to them at their weekend homes.⁵ Take some of any of that away — a vintage auto, a lonely pony idling the seasons away at the family ranch in Wyoming — and nothing essential would be missing. Existence would certainly not be threatened. Life would be as glorious as ever. The single irregularity⁶ that could disturb their serenity is finding out someone had the power to take that lonely pony away from them. The sole imperative of well-being for the ultrarich is the utter assurance that no one can or will interfere with their flow of revenue or the scope of their wealth.⁷

In performing an inventory of the bottom half, we suspect that “wealth” might be the wrong word to describe these assets. Nowise superfluous, the possessions we find here consist of necessities indispensable to daily functioning: modest, ramshackle, or worse dwellings; fatigued vehicles; bank accounts with a few hundred dollars; rudimentary retirement accounts with a thousand or two.⁸ Not what anyone would call wealth. Nothing to soothe a mind worried about the future. But this shouldn’t surprise us. In our beloved Horatio Alger stories, the laudable Americans who worked their way from rags to riches didn’t work like crazy to accumulate more rags, but to shed them.

The second of Reich’s equivocations is the hint that the bottom half “controls” its wealth. Your only car breaks down, you can’t get to work, you lose your job. The price of gas doubles, you can afford to drive to work but not to the grocery store. A child gets sick, you miss your shift to provide care. The wiring behind the refrigerator finally short-circuits. (It had been threatening to do so for years.) The pipes under the bathtub burst. (No one saw that coming.) Funny-smelling water is running out of the kitchen tap. The layer of mold along the baseboards in the hallway has thickened and is growing across the carpet. A cousin worse off than you shows up. The neighborhood petroleum processing plant explodes, you have to evacuate, your only place to go is your cousin’s, but she’s with you. You’re teetering, but haven’t tumbled. The stress is killing you, but you can’t afford to get sick. Some radical change has to be made, but what? There just isn’t a whole lot further down to go. You might have plenty of trouble, but you have zero control.

The words “enjoy” and “share” became contradictory in American parlance.

There was a time when the hoi polloi, despite straitened circumstances, could share in the bounty of the Earth for relief and enjoyment: escape to nearby fields for weekend walks; visit forests to enjoy the birdsong, collect stray branches for firewood, gather fallen acorns; quench thirst from a nearby spring; watch spectacular sunsets. 

But the conditions that defined the common good — natural resources available to the community to enjoy and share — were antithetical to the American ideals of liberty and prosperity. The words “enjoy” and “share” became contradictory in American parlance. Citizens could truly enjoy things only if they owned them. 

John Locke⁹ shares part of the blame in our private property mania. So does capitalism, the Bible and, ultimately, God. It all started with those verses in Genesis declaring — and everyone believing — that God gave Adam, then Noah, and through them all mankind, sovereignty over the Earth and the creatures therein.¹⁰ Locke then revealed that man need only apply his labor to an object to have the right to claim it as his own,¹¹ and off we went! Plenty of conditions and circumstances were subsequently applied to nuance the acquisition of property. For example, the two hardy Cumbrian intellects who decided to cut down the Sycamore Gap tree were granted ownership of neither the timber nor any branch thereof as the fruit of their labor. Nevertheless, the basic principle of an individual’s right to claim exclusive ownership over resources acquired through the sweat of one’s brow was never questioned. 

As a result, as society thrived large portions of the common good were successively pinched off from the general public as private wealth encroached to claim them. Citizens were hog-tied to prevent it because the nation was founded on private property rights alongside life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The fact that unbridled accumulation of private property constrained the exercise of any of the other rights bothered no one. An added contortion wrought by capitalism brought us to the strange point today where those who apply their labor to resources are the least likely to own anything.

Ashamed of their indigence, the poor are less likely to examine the circumstances of their financial distress.

A poor population is a vulnerable population. Ashamed of their indigence, they are less likely to examine the circumstances of their financial distress. Loathe to review their bank statements, they remain unaware of just how bad their financial state is and never understand why they’re there or how to get out.

Recognizing the potential of this benighted sector’s “negative” wealth, finance specialists set about developing financial instruments to plunder it. Due to their success, the less affluent are now entangled in a web of finance charges, fees, penalties, installment schedules, and interest payments they may not understand but cannot ignore. While ensuring lucrative revenues for the banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, and payday lenders “servicing” the sector, these hefty fees conveniently perpetuate their customers’ indebtedness. 

Two additional factors apply to make this market irresistible to savvy businesses. First, its size: it represents revenue streaming in from tens of millions of helpless, uninformed consumers. The second factor is the unbeatable principal-to-interest ratio involved. Impoverished purchasers can end up paying many times over in interest what their deluxe sofa or home entertainment center originally cost and may never pay off the principal until offered as a favor from that very business a high-interest loan conceived to shift their debt and interest payments to a different financial instrument at higher cost.

While the lower half may “control” a measly $4 trillion, the profits to be raked off it are staggering.

To visit the bottom half of the population, we are not conducted to the lower half of the ship.

We may be fooling ourselves, but we have the feeling we know where the top 0.1% work and play. How can we help it? News outlets, fashion magazines, ads, even movies constantly flash at us images of the rich and privileged; keep us abreast of the parties, celebrity weddings, concerts, and jubilees they attend; praise or ridicule what they wear to them; and remind us that they arrive and depart in private jets. Not so well known is the fact that the choicest berths — the top 13.8% — of our nation’s vast ship are reserved for them. To find where the bottom half of the income spectrum dwells, we must descend. 

Our first surprise is in finding that, though visiting the bottom half of the population, we are not conducted to the lower half of the ship. To get to the folks we seek, we must move much further down. As we do, the view transforms, shortens, darkens. We move into increasingly suffocating, claustrophobic spaces until we find ourselves squeezed into the bottom 2.5% of the ship.¹² And there they are. 

Who would think so many people could fit down here? Not only is it crowded; it’s the stinkiest, dirtiest part of the ship. No one is happy about being here, but escaping the zone would require an orientation their entrapment denies them. Most don’t realize how much ship there is above them, how to get to it, or how sparsely occupied it is. They don’t understand that being mired right where they are is due to neither bad fortune nor accident, but is the result of the free exercise of the God-given right to claim exclusive ownership, which, spreading like a plague, required the exodus of themselves along with 67 million other households to this darkest, foulest part of the ship. Nor can they know that their continued confinement is highly desirable for a very simple reason: they keep the boat afloat and the top 0.1% securely berthed on those upper decks.

Which calls to mind the story of the princess and the pea. From that tale, we learn that a true princess cannot sleep if her rest is disturbed by so minute an irregularity as an uncooked pea beneath 20 mattresses and 20 featherbeds. So what are we to think of our barons and billionaires sleeping soundly in hammocks slung across a virtual leper pit heaving with tens of millions of tormented souls? To understand, we must shift our perspective slightly. The muffled groans below blend as they rise until what reaches the ears of those slumbering above is the hum of a well-trimmed ship, their well-trimmed ship.

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1. Robert Reich is an American professor, lawyer, political commentator, and author of a widely read Substack newsletter. ↩︎
2. https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/the-richest-01-of-americans-control-22-trillion-in-wealth-the-bottom-50-control-/1220066136153498/ ↩︎
3. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/ ↩︎
4. These numbers come from an assessment published in February 2024. We all know the numbers keep changing and percentages can be conjured to zero in on various aspects of wealth distribution. So look up some of the numbers yourself, if you are so inclined. You will certainly find something a little different from what other reports provide, but the dramatic gap between rich and poor is not in doubt. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wealth-distribution-in-america/ ↩︎
5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/style/tote-taxi-hamptons-delivery.html ↩︎
6. Perhaps the size of an uncooked pea. ↩︎
7. “It’s mine!” resonates like a primal scream. It is disturbing to learn how deeply people associate their identity with their possessions. The adage “My home is my castle” is truer than we realize, the late-coming stand-your-ground law an ominous outgrowth.  ↩︎
8. This by no means represents all working-age poor families. Only 60% have $310 in a banking account; 61% a used car worth anything; 28% a home before the 2007 housing crisis; 9% a meager retirement fund. https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/25676/412624-Can-the-Poor-Accumulate-Assets-.PDF ↩︎
9. “English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the ‘father of liberalism.’” Wikipedia contributors. “John Locke.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Jul. 2025. Web. 30 Jul. 2025. ↩︎
10. Genesis 1:26-28; Genesis 9:2-3. ↩︎
11. Chapter V, §. 27, “Of Property,” The Two Treatises of Civil Government, John Locke, 1689. ↩︎
12. The bottom 2.5% of the ship’s space corresponds to the national wealth the lower half possesses: 2.5% of it. Same with the 13.8% of the ship occupied by the top 0.1% of the population: that sliver of Americans possesses 13.8% of the nation’s wealth. ↩︎