This is not your beautiful winery
Where? Where did my money go?
The top 0.00001% of the wealthy in the US, which consists of thirteen families (Musk is one of those families), has more money than the bottom 50%, which consists of 65,000,000 million families. If you’re a “do your own research” type, these numbers come from the United States’ Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) data. Even if you accept the numbers I cite, it is worth your time to go browse the interactive charts at The Federal Reserve, at least while they are still there. It is quite sobering, particularly if you are a Boomer or GenX.
My readers are in that thin tannish-brown line at the bottom, i.e., the bottom 50%. These are households with a median household income of about $120k-$150k. I’ll be referring to that group as “us.” It is where I have lived my entire life, and where my family and everyone I knew well lived theirs.
If you are above $150k in annual family income, I’m betting you aren’t much above. As a professional data scientist and risk manager, take it from me, that’s a distinction without a difference for this analysis. Read on.
You might take note that our wealth peaked in Q4 of 2024, after four years of Bidenomics. We’ve already lost ground in the first six months of the authoritarian rule by the GOP.
Under four years of Biden, our wealth (i.e., the bottom 50%) increased $3.17 Trillion, from $6.93 Trillion in Q1 2020 to 10.1 Trillion, in Q4 of 2024. That is wealth that was transferred downward, by the government, from the top 50%. That’s what got them all pissed off, even though the wealth of the top 50% increased by $58.88 Trillion, from $112.45 Trillion to $171.33 Trillion, in the same period. They outperformed us almost 10 to 1, but that wasn’t enough. They wanted Trumponomics.
The cult delivered for their donors. The Senate is about to rubber stamp the direct transfer of about $3.1 Trillion of the bottom 50%’s wealth, by reneging on a promise to help pay for working American’s health care and feed people in our borders who can’t afford food, than would already be transferred by the tech economy and and the other ways that the oligarchy is permitted to transfer wealth upward by private means. They will make a lot more than the $3 Trillion they are taking from Medicaid and food stamps via the only legislation they could pass, they just want that money that Biden gave to poor people back.
There’s the buried lede. Taking $3.1 Trillion via the Big Beautiful Bill puts us, the bottom 50%, back where we were when Biden was elected. What do you want to bet, when the Felon in Chief signs this into law, they serve cake?
That’ll show us.