It’s May 2025 – where are we at with wealth and income in the US you may wonder?? And how long until it all falls apart? It’s not looking stable out there tbh. Let’s look at some data, ponder how to disrupt the system, and experiment with micro changes to while managing any reasonable system collapse anxiety.
WEALTH
If all the $160T of wealth in the US was distributed evenly, each of the 340 million residents of the country would have about $470k [source] – but of course, that’s not currently the case.
Current distribution of wealth:
The top 10% own 67 of all the wealth%
- The top 0.1% own 14%
- The top 0.2-1% own 17% of the wealth
- The next top 9% own 36%
The 50-90% – aka the “middle class” own 30.3%
And the economically lower 50% of all people in the US – 170 million people – owns the remaining 2.5% of all wealth, which is course is also unevenly distributed, but would be about $23k/person if it were. [source]
If you’re out there feeling like $23k would change your life [and that person was me, for a long long time] that’s because you’re part of a large group of people for whom it would. And if you’re feeling like “I do have some money but not like … influential 1%-er call people and make things happen money,” you’re also right where the narrative about wealth wants you to be: feeling like there’s
INCOME
For anyone not in the top wealth holders, we need to earn money in order to make our lives work; but earning sufficient income is also getting more challenging.
The Ludwig Institute [LISEP] has two analysis tools, the Minimal Quality of Life (MQL) Index and the Shared Economic Prosperity (SEP) Measure, the latter of which “compares the income needed to achieve a minimal quality of life to actual income distribution…revealing a stark imbalance.
In 2023, the bottom 60% of households earned just 22.1% of all disposable income but needed 39% to meet MQL. On average, these households earn $38,000 per year, falling more than $29,000 short of the MQL…[unable to access] essential expenses beyond mere survival… housing, food, and healthcare but also education, transportation, technology and more.”
Source, Ludwig Institute.
Let me summarize: 3 in 5 US households are THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS SHORT of having the money they need to have a life that includes more than mere survival.
According the the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis’s Q2 2024 data, median personal income has stagnated since 2019, at around $42,000 per person. Which, if you are a person living in a city you are well aware that’s insufficient, given that the average cost of living in a US city is $85,000 [source] and goes up for bigger cities.
Let me again summarize: the bottom 60% of households, if they live in a city, are FORTY FIVE thousand dollars short of having the income needed to live comfortably – as in: go to the doctor, have sufficient food, take time off, buy new clothes.
For people in the top 40% of earning who bring in over $100k [source, source data – 2023], city life may well be livable – but we know that getting into the top 40% is a bit of a feat.
In the words of our elders: NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR.
NOW WHAT? I’M ANXIOUS
Frankly, it’s such a scam that we have to either finagle our lives around optimizing for making money, or accept that we’ll be missing out on things we and our families or communities need.
In the short term, I am interested in finagling having enough (and helping others do the same) as an immediate pain-reducer, but in the longer term just having some people making more money isn’t a system fixer.
Honestly, the realities of wealth and income distribution can make it hard not to resent people who have access to wealth. I know I certainly have! But I’m not sure it’s 100% worthwhile to take this approach. In my experience, spending time on individual resentment didn’t change my life experience or set up any scenario in which the overall system changes, though it probably did cost me some friends…
Even individual people with wealth redistributing it isn’t systemically changing things, though again it’s a useful pain-reducing action that we could use more of as inequality grows.
I’m not 100% certain on the One Best Next Step, but I do know how to reduce anxiety
Every leftist has a hot take yet none of us has the money that giant corporations do. As the vise tightens its going to get harder to maintain political status quo and reductions in purchasing power will impact markets soon enough, which leads to ~reasonable anxiety~!
As much as I dislike offering microcosm solutions, I think these are the most immediately applicable and in each of our control to do aka, things that can help AND make you less stressed in the short term:
- Seek to have the income you need to cover needs, wants, and mutual aid
- Spend with small businesses [yes even if its a bit more pricey] because they need the money more than corporations
- Find ways to increase the resources of others, be that starting a business together, sharing tools or gardens, or creating networks of care
- Have a little stash of savings and things you might need if/when prices get wild
The macrocosm solutions look more like
- A labor-focused 3rd party in the US ready to step in when a meltdown of our current system occurs
- Rethinking what it means to value labor, share, and create livable lives with others [Margaret Killjoy’s A Country of Ghosts is a nice imagination tool for this]
HOW DO I START??
As a systems thinker, I know that messing with even a small part of a large system can have wild downstream results, but since we’re still in the “fuck around” part of the new administration – and tragically in the “find out / but ignore it” part of climate change, it’s not feeling great to be an individual trying to survive in this moment with all the uncertainty flying around, and a pretty substantial increase in income and wealth inequality in the meantime.
Certainly, collective action for system change is the biggest picture – but what about in the meantime? How will we know if we have enough, are creating meaningful resources, or get ourselves to take micro actions that matter?
Much like tiny actions on systems can have downstream impacts that feel bad – tiny actions on your personal systems can have impacts that also are good. We don’t take these actions because we know everything about them, we take them because taking an action is better than spiraling in anxiety, and we can learn about ourselves and solve microproblems.
I released two bonus Have a Nice Life podcast episodes in May that go into detail on how to identify things to try, and how to run an experiment to see how the thing you’re trying might work out for you, for folks looking to make life changes in the current portal.
There’s always something you can do, even if it’s take a breather, and if you’re feeling uncertain or anxious, you have good reason – and still get to figure out what might help you feel 10% less in the spiral.