Verified: 400 Wealthiest Americans have a Greater Combined Net Worth than the Bottom 150 Million Americans

For the past couple months I have seen many quotes indicating the 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans. However, I couldn’t find an authoritative confirmation of the assertion until last night. PolitiFact confirmed the assertion through three renowned experts in the field: Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute.

Just think about it: 400 people have greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans! One really needs to believe in the “Great Man Theory” to justify that kind of net worth distribution.

In the context of today’s debates concerning shared sacrifice for the betterment of society it is noteworthy to quote Adam Smith:

“It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more in proportion.”

Other inequality measures document the widening of inequality in America:

The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.
Fom 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.
The Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, continues to grow in America, placing the United States as more unequal a society than either Ghana or Egypt. The CIA World Factbook ranks societies by income distribution using the Gini coefficient. The closer the Gini coefficient is to zero the more equal the society. On the other hand, the closer the Gini coefficient is to one the more unequal the society.

Rank	Country	Gini
1	Namibia	70.7
2	South Africa	65
3	Lesotho	63.2
4	Botswana	63
5	Sierra Leone	62.9
6	Central African Republic	61.3
7	Haiti	59.2
8	Colombia	58.5
9	Bolivia	58.2
10	Honduras	57.7
11	Guatemala	55.1
12	Brazil	53.9
13	Thailand	53.6
14	Hong Kong	53.3
15	Paraguay	53.2
16	Chile	52.1
17	Mexico	51.7
18	Panama	51
19	Papua New Guena	50.9
20	Zambia	50.8
21	Swaziland	50.4
22	Costa Rica	50.3
23	Gambia	50.2
24	Zimbabwe	50.1
25	Dominican Republic	48.4
26	Peru	48
27	Singapore	47.8
28	Madagascar	47.5
29	Nepal	47.2
30	El Salvador	46.9
31	Ecuador	46.9
32	Rwanda	46.8
33	Malaysia	46.2
34	Argentina	45.8
35	Philippines	45.8
36	Mozambique	45.6
37	Jamaica	45.5
38	Bulgaria	45.3
39	United States	45
40	Cameroon	44.6
41	Iran	44.5
42	Cambodia	44.4
43	Uganda	44.3
44	Macedonia	44.2
45	Nigeria	43.7
46	Guyana	43.2
47	Nicaragua	43.1
48	Kenya	42.5
49	Burundi	42.4
50	Uruguay	42.4
51	Russia	42.2
52	China	41.5
53	Cote d’Ivoire	41.5
54	Senegal	41.3
55	Venezuela	41
56	Morocco	40.9
57	Turkmenistan	40.8
58	Georgia	40.8
59	Sri Lanka	40.3
60	Mali	40.1
61	Tunisia	40
62	Jordan	39.7
63	Turkey	39.7
64	Burkina Faso	39.5
65	Guinea	39.4
66	Ghana	39.4
67	Israel	39.2
68	Mauritius	39
69	Malawi	39
70	Mauritania	39
71	Portugal	38.5
72	Moldova	38
73	Yemen	37.7
74	Lithuania	37.6
75	Vietnam	37.6
76	Japan	37.6
77	Tanzania	37.6
78	Indonesia	36.8
79	Uzbekistan	36.8
80	India	36.8
81	Laos	36.7
82	Mongolia	36.5
83	Benin	36.5
84	New Zealand	36.2
85	Bosnia and Herzegovina	36.2
86	Latvia	35.7
87	Algeria	35.3
88	Albania	34.5
89	Egypt	34.4
90	Poland	34.2
91	United Kingdom	34
92	Niger	34
93	Azerbaijan	33.7
94	Croatia	33.7
95	Switzerland	33.7
96	Kyrgyzstan	33.4
97	Bangladesh	33.2
98	Greece	33
99	France	32.7
100	Taiwan	32.6
101	Tajikistan	32.6
102	Canada	32.1
103	Spain	32
104	Italy	32
105	Timor-Leste	31.9
106	Estonia	31.4
107	South Korea	31.4
108	Romania	31.2
109	Netherlands	30.9
110	Armenia	30.9
111	Pakistan	30.6
112	Australia	30.5
113	European Union	30.4
114	Montenegro	30
115	Ethiopia	30
116	Kosovo	30
117	Ireland	29.3
118	Cyprus	29
119	Denmark	29
120	Slovenia	28.4
121	Serbia	28.2
122	Belgium	28
123	Iceland	28
124	Ukraine	27.5
125	Belarus	27.2
126	Germany	27
127	Finland	26.8
128	Kazakhstan	26.7
129	Austria	26
130	Slovakia	26
131	Luxembourg	26
132	Malta	26
133	Czech Republic	26
134	Norway	25
135	Hungary	24.7
136	Sweden	23

Below is a graph depicting increasing household income inequality in the U.S. from 1967 to 2010, as revealed in the trend line of the Gini coefficient. (I downloaded the original data from the Census Bureau.)

Why does inequality matter? Here are a three posts dealing with that subject:

If you are interested in trends and levels of inequality in America I have already posted that evidence here: Introduction: Rising Inequality in America, as well as in other related posts:

Verified: 400 Wealthiest Americans Have a Greater Combined Net Worth than the Bottom 150 Million Americans

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