Who Owns America?
In the United States, the top 1 percent of the population owns 40 percent of the nation's wealth.
The top 10 percent owns 85 to 90 percent of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equities, and over 75 percent of non-home real estate.
| Financial Wealth Distribution, 2001 | Net Worth Distribution, 2001 |
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As University of California Professor G. William Domhoff notes, Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing asses, we can say that just 10 percent of the people own the United States of America.
By comparison, the bottom 80 percent own only 9 percent of financial wealth, and a large number of Americans have zero assets or even negative wealth due to debt.
Excerpted from The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics (2007) by Riane Eisler
