It also depends on what being in the bottom 50% gives you a claim on.
If you have no net wealth, but a Scandinavian-style social safety net (not just retirement income, but healthcare, free access to arts/culture/parks and so on), you can still live a good life.
"Does the 80th percentile have an outsize claim on lifelong wellbeing relative to the 20th percentile" is a better metric than just looking at bank balances.
Also have to consider age effects, to what extent people move naturally up and down through the centiles through early and late working life and retirement. Looking at net wealth centiles in isolation doesn't tell you very much about how a society works.
From a socital stability point of view, i think it still matters. Too much inequality (especially when combined with lack of class mobility) leads to class resentment which is bad for sociatal stability. Humans get jealous even if their wealth increased in absolute terms.
As true and important as that it, there are more harmful and more direct effects wrapped up with our record inequality than jealousy and resentment, or even hate; like the capture of our political system.*
And most Americans have no idea how unequal wealth distribution really is, which means that those emotions are being easily redirected onto vulnerable groups by the people actually responsible for the gross inequality: immigrants, trans people, foreign powers etc.
* See, for example, the vast gulf between public opinion on issues like Israel, public healthcare, free education and housing for all, vs the opinion of the political and media class.
> * See, for example, the vast gulf between public opinion on issues like Israel, public healthcare, free education and housing for all, vs the opinion of the political and media class.
While i agree with you generally (blaming domestic problems on unpopular minorities or foreign enemies is a playbook as old as time), im not sure i agree that those issues are based on class division. Large swathes of America seem to be genuinely opposed to public healthcare. As a non american it boggles my mind, but it seems pretty clear that a significant portion dont want that for whatever reason (i would say that similarly those other issues don't follow class divides all that much either)
> im not sure i agree that those issues are based on class division.
Rule of thumb: it always, always goes back to class. No war but class war is a cliche for good reason.
> Large swathes of America seem to be genuinely opposed to public healthcare.
That may be kinda true, but most Americans actually want it [0]. They just have basically no representation in media or politics. These days we're 'lucky' if a Democrat gives healthcare the slightest lip service.
> (i would say that similarly those other issues don't follow class divides all that much either
They absolutely do. Most Americans want a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo vs Israel. The political and media class almost unanimously pretend that isn't the case, but it is.
Same with free education and housing. These aren't really debatable facts, or matters of opinion; you can look up the polls yourself. Americans want this stuff; our politicians and media do everything they can to stop us having them.
And that's despite the fact that the vast majority of media, traditional and social, is under the thumb of like ten ultrawealthy people.
> Rule of thumb: it always, always goes back to class. No war but class war is a cliche for good reason.
If its politically convinent to view things in terms of class then of course everything gets traced back to class. But i think that is more about trying to fit every peg into a round hole no matter how square it is. As the cliche goes, if all you have is a hammer.
> That may be kinda true, but most Americans actually want it [0]
I dont think the poll supports your contention. Only 57% wanted it. I'm not sure where you are drawing the line between classes here, but its hardly just the upper class saying no.
> If its politically convinent to view things in terms of class then of course everything gets traced back to class.
You think I form my views for 'political convenience'? How strange.
People trace things back to class because that's the driving force behind so much of what's wrong with the world. It's not the majority of ordinary people who are fighting for stripping environment regulations, or clamoring to make defense contractors billions of dollars, or pushing to make torture legal, or fighting to give Israel more 2,000 lb unguided bombs. It's the .1%. And that isn't really controversial, or difficult to figure out.
When the political and media class are openly bought and owned by the .1%, refusing to acknowledge classes role in politics is profoundly silly.
> I dont think the poll supports your contention. Only 57% wanted it.
"Only" 57%? 57% is 'most'. By any and every definition.
And if you compare that to the ~3% (at absolute max) of media and political figures who argue for public healthcare, you may start to see what the problem is.
> its hardly just the upper class saying no.
Yes - because 99% of the media, owned by the .1%, work every day to convince people that healthcare for profit is somehow a good and clever thing.
The American health model is a sad laughing stock. It's a bogey man all over the world, a stark example of the perils of taking privatization too far. People in other countries are still cheering for Luigi lol.
This class war which we are all in (whether we are aware of it or not) has casualties; one of them is our more vulnerable and easily manipulated brethren. That's why it's "only" 57% - because lifelong propaganda does indeed have an effect, especially on the easily swayed. A lot of Americans don't even know that this is the majority view.
> You think I'm writing these comments for 'political convenience'? How strange.
I think you are interpreting evidence to support your preferred narrative without considering alternative explanations. Which is what i meant by politically convinent.
> Ordinary people aren't fighting for stripping environment regulations, or clamoring to make defense contractors billions of dollars.
Ordinary (working class people) people who work in those industries tend to be ok with it (arguably that is what makes capitalism insidious).
> "Only" 57%? 57% is 'most'. By any and every definition.
> And if you compare that to the ~3% (at absolute max) of media and political figures who argue for public healthcare, you may start to see what the problem is.
57% is a little more than half, which suggests the issue isn't correlated very strongly with class given you are counting only at most 3% as upper class.
Remember that if this issue had nothing to do with class you would expect 50% support (assuming the actual relavent variable was equally present in the sample group). The baseline is not 0% (or 3%) as that is what would happen if it was a class issue in the opposite direction (what you would get if lower classes hated the idea). ~50% suggests it is not a class issue but has some other cause that is more evenly distributed in the sample group.
Obviously this survey is the wrong type of survey to determine much of anything since its not broken down by demographics.
> This class war which we are all in (whether we are aware of it or not) has casualties; one of them is our more vulnerable and easily manipulated brethren. That's why it's "only" 57% - because lifelong propaganda does indeed have an effect, especially on the easily swayed.
Convinent that anyone who disagrees is just being manipulated.
I'm not neccesarily even saying that is untrue - propaganda exists for a reason; it can be very effective. However if you assume everyone who disagrees is swayed that is a dangerous path. Its non-falsifiable. How do you distinguish between people swayed by propaganda and people who legitamently disagree. Hell, if you are going down this path, why do you assume the 57% that want free healthcare are the real preference instead of the swayed by propaganda group? When you start believing this type of thing it starts to become pointless since you can always spin it as if everyone agrees with you regardless of if they actually do.
Rough (not absolute) wealth equality is a goal in and of itself we want a capitalist economic system to function.
Capitalism only efficiently allocates resources if the market value of a good or service closely approximatatoon its "true" value to society. And that ceases to be the case when wealth is very unevenly spread.
>Rough (not absolute) wealth equality is a goal in and of itself we want a capitalist economic system to function.
No, it's not. Capitalism has nothing to do with equality. We can have extreme inequality as long as the workers actually get enough to satisfy them. That of course depends on many things like their productivity, supply and demand for labor, and preventing monopolistic abuses by corporations and labor.
>Capitalism only efficiently allocates resources if the market value of a good or service closely approximatatoon its "true" value to society. And that ceases to be the case when wealth is very unevenly spread.
Wealth inequality has nothing to do with market efficiency. Every person in the market makes decisions according to their own estimations of what the true value of a thing is. That's basically a democratized hive mind at work. If any individual spots a market inefficiency, they can try to exploit it, and in so doing increase overall satisfaction of market participants. This distinguishes capitalism from other systems like communism, which rely on a small number of central planners to make necessarily imperfect decisions for everyone based on limited understanding of the entire economy and all its participants.
> Every person in the market makes decisions according to their own estimations of what the true value of a thing is. That's basically a democratized hive mind at work
If everyone has equalish wealth then yes. Otherwise the hive mind becomes weighted by each person's wealth...
> This distinguishes capitalism from other systems like communism, which rely on a small number of central planners to make necessarily imperfect decisions for everyone based on limited understanding of the entire economy and all its participants.
...which ends up not being very different at all to communism in this regard. Your billionaires become your central planners. Except they're not even trying to make good decisions for other people in most cases.
Now, granted, power in western democracies in 2025 is less centralised than it was in soviet Russia, but it's a hell of a lot more centralised than it was in the 70s and 80s. And currently it's only getting worse.
>If everyone has equalish wealth then yes. Otherwise the hive mind becomes weighted by each person's wealth...
What makes you think everyone's opinion is equally important in the economy? Some people do more important things than others, and thus their decisions must be weighted higher. Otherwise, inefficiency would be created.
>...which ends up not being very different at all to communism in this regard. Your billionaires become your central planners. Except they're not even trying to make good decisions for other people in most cases.
If we're talking about billionaires who get rich through honest business, then they are by definition great planners who are bestowed money through satisfying the needs of many people. They can lose their money. They also only do part of the planning... Most of the decisions about what ought to be valuable are made by all the other participants in the economy. The billionaires are just the tip of the spear when it comes to actually doing big picture stuff.
>Now, granted, power in western democracies in 2025 is less centralised than it was in soviet Russia, but it's a hell of a lot more centralised than it was in the 70s and 80s. And currently it's only getting worse.
Western countries have been outsourcing manufacturing and automating everything which destroys jobs for short-term gains. It's not exactly the work of billionaires. It is more like a failure of people at every level to choose their countries over profits. Protectionism is one market inefficiency that I think we need.
That's the wrong question (a very poor state to aim for!). The right questions are: are we better off than we were? And are we as well off as we could be?
> It so easily becomes: capitalism = bad
It so easily becomes "capitalism vs. communism". Where is our imagination to dream better?
(both are bad in my opinion, and for similar reasons (centralisation of power))
I was actually surprised it's this high (more equal than I expected). But then I clicked the article and of course the title failed to mention that it's top 10% in the US
Wealth equality is not really a goal, it better to ask if the bottom 50% got wealthier in absolute terms, which the author answers in another post:
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/06/the-bottom-50/