Bernie Sanders on wealth inequality: what the evidence says · JRE #2341

What the evidence says 01 / RECORD

Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts data show the top 1 percent of U.S. households held about 31.6 percent of total net worth in early 2026, roughly equal to the entire bottom 90 percent, so the top 1 percent owning more than most Americans combined is well established. The precise bottom 93 percent framing is on the strong end and traces to alternative distributional estimates rather than the Fed series, whose standard comparison is closer to the bottom 90 percent. On CEO pay, the Economic Policy Institute found that chief executives at the 350 largest U.S. firms were paid 351 times the typical worker in 2020 under its realized-pay measure, with that ratio ranging from roughly 270 to nearly 400 to 1 across recent years. Both figures are real and traceable to authoritative sources, making the claim largely accurate, with the bottom 93 percent number slightly overstated relative to the Fed's own data.