The Federal Reserve just released new research that shows the rich–especially the top 3% of Americans–have made massive gains in net worth since the financial crisis, while the rest of the country has stalled or gone backwards.
Record-setting stock market prices and the concentration of wealth at the top have exacerbated the plight of the middle class, which typically derives most of its wealth–despite 401k plans– from a single asset, housing. And home values have been bludgeoned, at least in comparison to stocks and other assets more generally held by the wealthy. The Fed research tells this tale of a seemingly irreversible trend: “Families at the bottom of the income distribution saw continued substantial declines in average real incomes between 2010 and 2013, continuing the trend observed between the 2007 and 2010 surveys.”
