A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the richest 400 Americans have a combined net worth of $2.34 trillion, which is equal to that of the bottom 61 percent of the U.S. population, or about 194 million people.
According to the report, “Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us,” a mere 20 individuals now control more wealth than the bottom half of the population: 152 million people living in 57 million households. Explaining that the distribution of wealth in America no longer resembles a pyramid, but is more like Seattle’s Space Needle, the report states, “the higher up you go up our contemporary wealth ladder, the greater the imbalance.”