Rich One Percent Of America Are Richer Than Expected, But Even One Percenters ‘Suffer’ From Income Inequality

The rich one percent of America may actually be far richer than previous estimates have claimed according to Philip Vermeulen, senior economist at the European Central Bank. But exactly how much money do the super rich actually have?

In a related report by The Inquisitr, Democrats are claiming that President Obama is putting the issue of income inequality on the backburner due to the 2014 mid-term elections. It’s said that “both the White House and the Senate agreed that the decline of middle-class incomes was the most serious issue we face in this country, but the focus had to be on how to get middle-class incomes up, rather than drive other people’s incomes down.”

Now it’s often claimed the rich one percent of America own about 30 percent of all the wealth in the country. It turns out that estimate may have been a bit too conservative. Mr. Vermeulen believes the top earners actually own around 35 to 37 percent all the wealth. He claims that surveys which attempt to ascertain the assets of the super rich often prove to undervalue their holdings:

“Our knowledge of the wealth distribution is less than perfect. The results clearly indicate that survey wealth estimates are very likely to underestimate wealth at the top.”

Apparently, the rich one percent are not facing the same problems as the middle, which have not seen a major increase in wages or income during the last 15 years. In fact, even though it’s said that America’s wealth bounced back after the recession the majority of this money went to one percenters, which many in the middle class saw an overall decrease in their net wealth.

But even among the rich there is a type of income inequality, of a sort. The one percent of the one percent, or the 0.01 percent top earners in America have seen their income share quintuple over the last 40 years while the bottom of the one percent have merely increased ahead of the 99 percent of the U.S. population. This bottom 0.5 percent is comprised of lawyers, doctors, and professionals whose incomes are usually measured in at least six figures. The top 0.5 percent can pretty much be summarized as Wall Street, since their wealth bounces up and down with the eddies and ties of the stock market.

Are you surprised that the top one percent of the rich in America may own more than a third of all the wealth?