Our Feckless Leader promotes the reduction of taxes on dividends and capital gains by claiming that 50 percent of Americans own some stocks or mutual funds. In fact, only 5 percent of Americans own 89 percent of all closely held business assets, 79 percent of stocks, and 70 percent of mutual funds. In the last fifteen years, the share of the top 1 percent in America's total wealth has increased from 30 percent to 33.4 percent, while the share of the bottom 50 percent has decreased from 3 percent to 2.5 percent. Fewer and fewer of Americans own more and more of its wealth. It's more a "secret society" than an "ownership society" - the sort of thing that the posh might join at Yale.

"Inequality Counts" from The Nation