American Wealth, Sliced Up

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posted May 27 @ 04:20 PM by Jason Kottke  ·  gift link

American Wealth, Sliced Up

Using the Federal Reserve’s Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989 data, Ryan Thorpe imagines a pizza party with 100 guests and 100 slices of pizza as a stand-in for the United States:

We’re having a pizza party with 100 guests! Let’s divvy up the slices the way wealth is divided among American households:<br>• 1 person gets 30 slices<br>• 9 people get 3.7 slices each<br>• 40 people get 0.75 slices each<br>• 50 people get 0.05 slices each<br>Dig in! But watch out for "those people" trying to steal your 0.05.

I checked the math and it’s not quite 100 slices…it’s ~96.1 I whipped up a pizza pie chart (embedded above) so you can visualize how much each person gets. Is this the kind of party we Americans want to attend on a daily basis?

I imagine Thorpe rounded off some numbers for clarity. ↩

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Michael Beuselinck<br>2026-05-27T21:47:29Z

Have you listened to Ray Madoff who is making the rounds in podcasts lately? (Prof G Markets, Ezra Klein, etc.) She has some interesting proposals for income and inheritance taxation reform so we don't continue as an "Inheritocracy."

Have you listened to Ray Madoff who is making the rounds in podcasts lately? (Prof G Markets, Ezra Klein, etc.) She has some interesting proposals for income and inheritance taxation reform so we don't continue as an "Inheritocracy."

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Sara<br>2026-05-27T22:00:30Z

This was my monthly reminder to never read comments on an interesting click-through jeeeeeeeez

This was my monthly reminder to never read comments on an interesting click-through jeeeeeeeez

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Troy Ober<br>2026-05-27T22:07:27Z

I don't know whether "You can't tear down the master's house with the master's tools" is correct or not but I do know that you can't defeat Mark Zuckerberg by posting things on Threads.

I don't know whether "You can't tear down the master's house with the master's tools" is correct or not but I do know that you can't defeat Mark Zuckerberg by posting things on Threads.

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