THE GREAT LEVELER

Abstract

Wealth inequality has reached staggering proportions in America. The massive concentration of wealth in the top 0.1% of the population — one-tenth of one percent — is more extreme than at any previous time in American history, more than during the era of the Robber Baron Industrialists during the latter 19th century, and more even than at the peak of the stock market mania in the late 1920s before the Crash of 1929. Economic disparity and the accompanying differences in social power between the very few at the top and the multitudes below are so vast as to be nearly inconceivable. The three richest individuals — Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos — have amassed more wealth than the bottom half of the populace.