In 1900, it required a net worth of $39,000 to be classified as America’s top 1%. The median factory worker earned just shy of $500 per year. At the end of the Gilded Age, it would have been a fair claim to suggest that the United States resembled an aristocracy, as over half of America’s richest 1% received at least $20,000 in inheritance. Statistically speaking, if you were at the top crest of America’s wealth distribution, it was more likely than not that your wealth could be tied to receiving something from your parents.
Modern America, with all of its hand-wringing over the role that intergenerational wealth transfers play in creating systemic unfairness at a minimum and consolidated political power at a maximum, overstates the extent to which calcified wealth is present in the United States today.
The best work I’ve encountered that really dives into the data points is … Read the rest of this article!
The post America’s Wealthy Top 1 Percent Didn’t Inherit It first appeared on The Conservative Income Investor.