The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
Some of the points about privilege might be accurate, but breaking economic status in to .1%, 9.9%, and 90% is arbitrary and misleading. The author tries to make the point that “the 9.9%” have the majority of the wealth and this issue is as big or bigger than the concentration of wealth at the very top. The problem is that this is largely an artifact of the division system. The distribution is highly skewed, and the much of the wealth in the 9.9 is going to actually be in that top .9.<p>In other words, the author just divides the top 1% into two pieces, and lumps one of them in with “the 9.9”.<p>Edit: I did a little research and math. The top 1% holds 40% of US wealth. The top 10% holds 77%. That’s 37% to “the 9%”. I would hypothesize that even within this 9% we’d find the wealth concentrated at the top in the “2nd 1%”, i.e., the top 2% likely make the middle class look mostly irrelevant.