[Phiwise_]

I don't know where you got this impression from, but that's not what the official data says. In relative terms, the bottom 50% hold a larger share of the total net worth than they have since 2003 (ignoring the obviously temporary Cantillon spike), which is over 5 times as much as they did in 2011, and finally comfortably above 50% of their record in 1993 (since 1990) [1]. In absolute terms, they hold twice as many real dollars as they did in 1990 [2], which they got to through the largest relative spike and smallest relative fall of all the tracked tranches. Meanwhile the relative wealth of the two rich segments of 99-100 and 90-99 have been flat for a decade and hardest-landed slightly above the all time low in 1996 [3].

It's truly remarkable to me that people don't remember just how bad things used to be. It's not even been eighteen years; what's the excuse for such short institutional memory? I even doubled the standard graph height and it still pretty much disappears both absolutely and relatively. Or perhaps the talking points are just a little under eighteen years out of date? In that case, there's some good news on the horizon: The yield curve has risen dangerously close to un-inverted [0], which has precipitated or tracked with every recession since the mid 50s, and will probably rise more soon as the market prices back out Powell's flinch in the face of thirty-five months of inflation over 3%; the poor usually take it on the chin the hardest during malinvestment blowups as they scramble to underbid each other for the remaining jobs that didn't fold under the weight of unprofitable compassion, so we can expect the reality of poverty to give wealth inequality rhetoric a comeback. Give it two good years and we can all join Alan Kay in complaining about "That [second] time the bankers stole all our money" once again when the data refresh our memories on just how bad they can get.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317951

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317969

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317984

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y

[Turing_Machine]

Alan Kay????

Do you maybe mean Alan Greenspan?

[leereeves]

And yet:

> 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highe...

I suspect cash flow and the price of expensive purchases like cars and homes matters a lot more to working people than total share of net worth.

[Phiwise_]

If you had read my graph before commenting, you would have noticed that the bottom 50% had 1.289 million millions in Q3 2022, and have 1.189 million millions in Q3 2023, which is indeed a smaller number.

You should also be aware that consumer sentiment surveys that drill down into concrete sentiments usually find consumers are very negative about the current price of durables, which are indeed quite high compared to historically [1]. They also tend to come down slowly without a inciting crash.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUS0000SAD

[leereeves]

I'm not commenting to dispute your numbers, which I trust are correct.

I'm considering the possibility that the measures you've chosen don't reflect the impact of the economy on people's lives. As GP said "entire generation now has no prospects of buying a house, even renting is hard, etc.".

You've convinced me that the phrase "wealth inequality" is a ghost of the past, a lingering rally cry from 2011, when wealth inequality truly was historically high.

We need a new term for the current situation. The data shows that the wealth of the bottom 50% has recovered - but their lifestyles and happiness have not.

[zaphar]

Shifting cultural norms is a really hard and takes a long time. Lifestyles and happiness are a reflection of culture in combination with environment. We've managed to shift cultural norms in a direction where it's fashionable to dwell on and complain about your current situation.

I think there is a balance to be struck between wishing to make forward progress and obsessing about how far behind you are as compared to someone else. Learning to live within your means while charting a course to a better life is not a core cultural value anymore. This results in more people complaining about their situation and asking their environment to change in some way to make it better.

[TMWNN]

>We need a new term for the current situation. The data shows that the wealth of the bottom 50% has recovered - but their lifestyles and happiness have not.

"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>

[fuzzfactor]

>the bottom 50% hold a larger share of the total net worth than they have since 2003

>while 50% are worse off.

Well 2003 is a long time ago so these are not supposed to be exactly simultaneous.

But when you do the math, statistically there is very little chance of either of these statistics being 100% accurate ;)

But the numbers are right there in the most plausible ball park, why else would anyone ever lacking prosperity been envious of "how the other half lives"?

So might as well take the figures at face value anyway.

Well what it tells us is that the bottom 50% is getting a marginal amount more trickling down, which obviously isn't doing any good since it's far too little too late and the full amount they were getting wasn't even enough to give them the economic ballast to keep the ship from capsizing.

Maybe more accurately said to keep the ship from being able to capsize.

One could only hope.