The $50,000,000,000,000 Upward Transfer of Wealth

According to the Rand Corporation, since 1975, a staggering $50 trillion has gone from the bottom 90% straight to the top

Mitchell Peterson
5 min readSep 16, 2021

Everyone knows inequality has been steadily growing worldwide. Economist Thomas Piketty’s surprise best-seller Capital in the 21st Century laid out the state of global inequality back in 2013. More recently, the Rand Corporation took a stab at putting a price on how much money has been redistributed from the bottom to the top in the US of A.

The number is stupid large: $47,000,000,000,000 to be exact.

How on earth did forty-seven trillion — trillion with a t — get vacuumed from hard-working Americans to corporate CEOs and shareholders? What would the country look like if the distribution of the economic gains would have stayed even, like the post-war period?

It’s a cliche to say America is a bonafide dumpster fire at the moment, but it rings true for a reason. My super-politically involved Italian friend visited me recently and commented, “America is like a third-world country with money.” While that is a bit of an oxymoron, is he wrong?

The poverty stats are insane: almost half the country without $400, 13 million children in food insecurity, the worst COVID…

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Mitchell Peterson
Mitchell Peterson

Written by Mitchell Peterson

Freelance writer who spent nine years outside the US, currently in rural America writing the Substack bestseller 18 Uncles.