Real Life Monopoly

If we were to divide all the “Household Wealth” in America and determine what percentage of the whole the poorest 20% owned, the 2nd poorest 20% and so on,  the data would look like this: .

Household Wealth in the United States

(click here for source)

To better illustrate these figures, imagine we sat down to play a game of Monopoly with 5 players. Instead of being given $1500 a pieces, our game of “Real Life” Monopoly would divide the cash at the beginning of the game as follows:

Who do you suspect would win?

PS – These figures are from 1998. The gap between the rich and poor is much larger since the Bush tax cuts for the rich, in fact,  according to an internal Citigroup memo, the top one percent now own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.

PPS – This article was inspired by an excellent post by Jim Moss, over at the Seminal — but he used Census Bureau data on income, not wealth.