Misc.
Scroll-Down Economics
Back in the early ’80s, a bunch of greedy old white men realized they could use the Republican party (with a pinch of capital-R Religion and a dash of hate-mongering) to manipulate the teeming throngs into making the obnoxiously rich become absurdly rich.
Their spokes-demon Reagan promised that if we made the rich richer, the money would trickle down to the rest of us.
For forty-four years they have used the same formula to sell that lie. Let’s check the math.
As a baseline, in 1983, the 400 richest Americans held about one third the wealth that the entire bottom half of the country (42 million households) owned combined.
By 2025, they hold nearly twice as much as an even larger bottom half of the country (67 million households) combined.
Four hundred people vs. sixty-seven million households. From 1/3 to 2x.
Sure, the middle American household doubled its wealth, but the average member of the 400 multiplied theirs by eighteen.
And of course, the poorest tenth of the country (a large portion of whom actively chose and continued this path) went from $5,000 in debt to $25,000 in debt.
For those who are better with visualizations, below, one pixel is $10,000.
For anyone out there still believing a single word that the 0.1% or their obese puppets with bad hair say, I invite you to locate your net worth percentile. And press play.
Then scroll down.
And then scroll some more…
Then think about your choices.
All values have been adjusted to 2025 dollars
1 px = $10,000 · Lines wrap at 3,000px ($30 Million)
1983survey year
The 400's bar 92,396 px · 31 linesMiddle household 11 pxOne of the 400 = 8,461 middle householdsThe 400 own 31% of what the bottom 42.0M households own combined
Top 0.1%
Poorest 10%8.4M households
10–20%8.4M households
20–30%8.4M households
30–40%8.4M households
40–50%8.4M households
50–60%8.4M households
60–70%8.4M households
70–80%8.4M households
80–90%8.4M households
90–99%7.5M households
99–99.9%757,289 households
Other 84K83,738 households
400 richest400 people
$0$10M$20M$30M
−$5K · 1 px
$4K · 0 px
$16K · 2 px
$44K · 4 px
$85K · 8 px
$133K · 13 px
$196K · 20 px
$294K · 29 px
$484K · 48 px
$1.5M · 146 px
$7.8M · 778 px
$48.2M · 1.6 lines
$924M · 30.8 lines
Household groups: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances ↗️, 1983–2025, which excludes the Forbes 400 by design. The 400 richest: Forbes 400 list data 2010–2025, and Saez & Zucman (2016) for earlier years. All figures in 2025 dollars.
Inflation: the Fed’s CPI-U-RS September index for 1989–2025; 1983 chained to 1989 with BLS CPI-U. Between survey years the animation interpolates.