This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America's economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
Which is still, just insane to think about.
Like holy crap I can hardly imagine seeing 4 dollar-digits of liquidity in my account. In my lifetime, and I think I work hard in a role in society like anybody else.
Something like that would require the most unlikely of windfalls. To think there's people out there, somewhat "commonly", going "Hmmm yerrs, let's put $20k into these stonks. Indeeed..."
...and then they reap returns, and go on and start businesses with "risk" (but not much, proportionally) and then publish books about "quitting the rat race and following your dreams."
And they might be a few zip codes away from me. It's nuts to me. Incomprehensible, really. Just...damn.
I don't wanna be rich, that sounds awful. I just wanna stop forever bracing against the next inevitable-but-untimeable calamity that threatens to throw us all out on the street.