David Kemp provided research assistance for this study.

1 “Bernie Sanders’s Estate Tax Plan Would Reduce the Federal Debt and Help Even the Playing Field,” editorial, Washington Post, February 3, 2019.

2 Paul Krugman, “Elizabeth Warren Does Teddy Roosevelt,” New York Times, January 28, 2019.

3 “Sen. Sanders Highlights Wealth Inequality in US,” Associated Press, video, November 13, 2017.

4 Office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, “Senator Warren Unveils Proposal to Tax Wealth of Ultra‐​Rich Americans,” press release, January 24, 2019.

5 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty‐​First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014). The English translation was first published in 2014.

6 Martin Feldstein, “Piketty’s Numbers Don’t Add Up,” in Jean‐​Philippe Delsol, Nicolas Lecaussin, and Emmanuel Martin, eds., Anti‐​Piketty: Capital for the 21st Century (Washington: Cato Institute, 2017), p. 73.

7 Alan J. Auerbach and Kevin Hassett, “Capital Taxation in the 21st Century,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 20871, January 2015.

8 Richard Sutch, “The One Percent across Two Centuries: A Replication of Thomas Piketty’s Data on the Concentration of Wealth in the United States,” Social Science History 41 (Winter 2017): 587–613.

9 Chris Giles and Ferdinando Giugliano, “Thomas Piketty’s Exhaustive Inequality Data Turn Out to Be Flawed,” Financial Times, May 23, 2014.

10 Delsol, Lecaussin, and Martin, eds., Anti‐​Piketty; and Curtis S. Dubay and Salim Furth, “Understanding Thomas Piketty and His Critics,” Heritage Foundation, September 12, 2014.

11 Jon Hartley, “Why Economists Disagree with Piketty’s ‘r‐​g’ Hypothesis on Wealth Inequality,” Forbes, October 17, 2014.

12 Matthew Rognlie, “Deciphering the Fall and Rise in the Net Capital Share: Accumulation or Scarcity,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2015, Figure 3.

13 The website is WID.world. The executive committee for the site also includes Facundo Alvaredo and Lucas Chancel.

14 James K. Galbraith, “Sparse, Inconsistent and Unreliable: Tax Records and the World Inequality Report 2018,” Development and Change 50, no. 2 (March 2019): 335, 337.

15 Gerald Auten and David Splinter, “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long‐​Term Trends,” working paper, August 23, 2018, p. 1. An updated 2019 working paper and data are available at david​splin​ter​.com.

16 Auten and Splinter, “Income Inequality,” p. 7. A related issue is that tax law changes in 1986 increased the number of dependent filers, which “are incorrectly treated as separate low‐​income units if no adjustments are made,” note the authors.

17 Jesse Bricker et al., “Measuring Income and Wealth at the Top Using Administrative and Survey Data,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2015–030, Federal Reserve Board, April 2015; and Sean E. Mulholland and Cortnie Shupe, “Income Inequality in the United States,” Mercatus Center, December 4, 2018. Bricker and colleagues note, “Administrative income tax data also limits the income concept to what is currently taxable, leading many forms of income to go unmeasured.… Unmeasured compensation … biases down incomes in the middle of the distribution proportionally more than the top, and the relatively rapid growth in untaxed incomes has led to a systematic upward bias in the growth of top shares in tax data.”

18 Alan Reynolds, “Optimal Top Tax Rates: A Review and Critique,” Cato Journal 39, no. 3 (Fall 2019).

19 Martin Feldstein, “Piketty’s Numbers Don’t Add Up,” opinion, Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2014. For example, more compensation for top earners was in the form of salaries after 1986 rather than company stock, which had not shown up on tax returns.

20 Susan C. Nelson, “Paying Themselves: S Corporation Owners and Trends in S Corporation Income, 1980–2013,” Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis Working Paper no. 107, August 2016, p. 12.

21 Auten and Splinter, “Income Inequality.”

22 The most recent PSZ data is available at Emmanuel Saez’s website, https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez. In particular, see Table TC10 at https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SZ2019.zip. PSZ data is also discussed in Auten and Splinter, “Income Inequality.”

23 Auten and Splinter, “Income Inequality”; Reynolds, “Optimal Top Tax Rates”; and John F. Early, “Reassessing the Facts about Inequality, Poverty, and Redistribution,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 839, April 24, 2018.

24 Auten and Splinter, “Income Inequality,” p. 23.

25 Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 20625, October 2014.

26 Jesse Bricker et al., “Measuring Income and Wealth,” p. 20.

27 Data on the U.S. top 1 percent wealth share downloaded from WID.world in September 2019.

28 Matthew Smith, Owen Zidar, and Eric Zwick, “Top Wealth in the United States: New Estimates and Implications for Taxing the Rich,” July 19, 2019. The authors note that their study and data are preliminary.

29 In particular, Smith, Zidar, and Zwick use more precise and heterogeneous rates of return within asset classes to measure wealth from capital income flows. For example, households at high‐ and low‐​income levels earn different interest rates on their savings, and that matters in estimating the amount of interest‐​paying assets each group holds.

30 Smith, Zidar, and Zwick, “Top Wealth in the United States.” The authors note that their study and data are preliminary.

31 Surveys are available at www​.fed​er​al​re​serve​.gov/​e​c​o​n​r​e​s​/​s​c​f​i​n​d​e​x.htm.

32 Michael Batty et al., “Introducing the Distributional Financial Accounts of the United States,” Finance and Economics Discussion Series no. 2019-017, Federal Reserve Board, March 2019.

33 The 1962 survey was the Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers. The 1983 survey was the Survey of Consumer Finances but had somewhat different methods than the recent ones.

34 Edward N. Wolff, “Household Wealth Trends in the United States, 1962 to 2016: Has Middle Class Wealth Recovered?,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 24085, November 2017, Table 2.

35 Wojciech Kopczuk and Emmanuel Saez, “Top Wealth Shares in the United States, 1916–2000: Evidence from Estate Tax Returns,” National Tax Journal 57, no. 2: 445–88.

36 Wojciech Kopczuk, “What Do We Know about Evolution of Top Wealth Shares in the United States?,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 20734, December 2014, p. 15.

37 Jesse Bricker et al., “Measuring Income and Wealth at the Top Using Administrative and Survey Data,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, BPEA Conference Draft, March 10–11, 2016, Figure 5.

38 Catherine Clifford, “Warren Buffet on Wealth Inequality: ‘A Rich Family’ Takes Care of Its Own and the US Should Too,” CNBC​.com, February 26, 2019.

39 Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick, and Ulrike I. Steins, “Income and Wealth Inequality in America: 1949–2016,” Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Paper no. 9, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, June 2018, p. 36.

40 Between the Federal Reserve’s 2013 and 2016 surveys, for example, housing prices rose 6.5 percent a year while equities rose 9 percent, which had the effect of nudging upwards the top 1 percent share of wealth over that period. Jesse Bricker et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2013 to 2016: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Bulletin 103, no. 3, September 2017, p. 1.

41 Bricker et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances,” Table 2.

42 Bricker et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances,” Table 4.

43 Bricker et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances,” p. 29.

44 Sebastian Devlin‐​Foltz, Alice Henriques Volz, and John Sabelhaus, “Is the U.S. Retirement System Contributing to Rising Wealth Inequality?,” The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2, no. 6 (October 2016): 59–85, Figure 22.

45 Martin Feldstein, “Income Inequality and Poverty,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 6770, October 1998, Abstract, p. 1.

46 Jason Furman, “Wal‐​Mart: A Progressive Success Story,” Center for American Progress, November 28, 2005.

47 Feldstein, “Income Inequality and Poverty,” p. 1.

48 Bricker et al., “Changes in U.S. Family Finances,” Table 2.

49 World Bank, “GDP per Capita (Constant 2010 US$)—China,” https://​data​.world​bank​.org/​i​n​d​i​c​a​t​o​r​/​N​Y​.​G​D​P​.​P​C​A​P​.​K​D​?​l​o​c​a​t​i​o​ns=CN.

50 World Bank, “Poverty Gap at $3.20 a Day (2011 PPP) (%)—China,” https://​data​.world​bank​.org/​i​n​d​i​c​a​t​o​r​/​S​I​.​P​O​V​.​L​M​I​C​.​G​P​?​l​o​c​a​t​i​o​ns=CN.

51 World Inequality Database, “Income Inequality, China, 1978–2015.” As we noted in Section 1, the data on this site should be considered rough, especially for less‐​developed countries.

52 Gini coefficients range from 0 to 100 (or, alternatively, 0 to 1) and are lower in populations with low levels of inequality and higher in populations with higher levels of inequality.

53 Credit Suisse Research Institute, “Global Wealth Databook 2018,” October 2018, Table 3–1; and Luca Ventura, “Wealth Distribution and Income Inequality by Country 2018,” Global Finance, November 26, 2018.

54 Credit Suisse Research Institute, “Global Wealth Databook 2018,” Table 3–1; and Ventura, “Wealth Distribution and Income Inequality.”

55 The United Nations data is at http://​hdr​.undp​.org/​e​n​/​2​0​1​8​-​u​pdate.

56 GAN Business Anti‐​Corruption Portal, “Russia Corruption Report”; GAN Business Anti‐​Corruption Portal, “Kazakhstan Corruption Report”; and Jason M. Breslow, “Inequality and the Putin Economy: Inside the Numbers,” PBS Frontline, January 13, 2015.

57 Ron Synovitz, “Russia Has Highest Level of Wealth Inequality,” Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, October 10, 2013.

58 Credit Suisse Research Institute, Global Wealth Report 2018, October 2018, p. 16.

59 World Bank, “Poverty Headcount Ratio at $1.90 a Day (2011 PPP) (% of population),” https://​data​.world​bank​.org/​i​n​d​i​c​a​t​o​r​/​S​I​.​P​O​V​.DDAY; and Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz‐​Ospina, “Global Extreme Poverty,” Our World in Data, University of Oxford, revised March 27, 2017.

60 Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie, “Hunger and Undernourishment,” Our World in Data, University of Oxford, 2013.

61 Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz‐​Ospina, “Literacy,” Our World in Data, University of Oxford, revised September 20, 2018.

62 Max Roser, “Life Expectancy,” Our World in Data, University of Oxford, 2013.

63 Credit Suisse Research Institute, Global Wealth Report 2018, p. 14.

64 Feldstein, “Income Inequality and Poverty,” p. 2.

65 “Sanders Highlights Wealth Inequality.”

66 Dylan Matthews, “AOC’s Policy Adviser Makes the Case for Abolishing Billionaires,” Vox, July 9, 2019.

67 Office of Senator Bernie Sanders, “For the 99.8% Act: Summary of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Legislation to Tax the Fortunes of the Top 0.2%,” January 28, 2019.

68 Krugman, “Warren Does Teddy Roosevelt.”

69 Piketty, Capital in the Twenty‐​First Century, p. 26.

70 Rognlie, “Net Capital Share.”

71 Rognlie, “Net Capital Share,” Figure 3.

72 Laurence Kotlikoff, “Will the Rich Always Get Richer?,” PBS News Hour, May 16, 2014.

73 Rognlie, “Net Capital Share.” The quote is from the Brookings abstract of the study.

74 Rognlie, “Net Capital Share.” The quote is from the Brookings abstract of the study.

75 Steven N. Kaplan and Joshua D. Rauh, “Family, Education, and Sources of Wealth among the Richest Americans, 1982–2012,” American Economic Review 103, no. 3 (May 2013): 158–62.

76 Luisa Kroll and Kerry A. Dolan, eds., “The Forbes 400: The Definitive Ranking of the Wealthiest Americans,” Forbes, October 2, 2019.

77 As of 2012, the remaining names from 1982 are at Sean Kilachand, “The Forbes 400 Hall of Fame: 36 Members of Our Debut Issue Still in Ranks,” Forbes, September 20, 2012. We looked at the further changes since then.

78 Robert Arnott, William Bernstein, and Lillian Wu, “The Myth of Dynastic Wealth: The Rich Get Poorer,” Cato Journal 35, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 463.

79 Arnott, Bernstein, and Wu, “Myth of Dynastic Wealth,” p. 448.

80 Piketty, Capital in the Twenty‐​First Century, p. 435, 439.

81 Delsol, Lecaussin, and Martin, eds., Anti‐​Piketty, p. 33; and Sean Kilachand, “Forbes History: The Original 1987 List of International Billionaires,” Forbes, March 21, 2012.

82 William McBride, “Thomas Piketty’s False Depiction of Wealth in America,” Tax Foundation Special Report no. 223, July 2014.

83 Peter A. Diamond, “What Stock Market Returns to Expect for the Future?,” Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, September 1999.

84 Kaplan and Rauh, “Family, Education, and Sources of Wealth,” pp. 158–62.

85 Luisa Kroll, “The Forbes 400 Self‐​Made Score: From Silver Spooners to Bootstrappers,” Forbes, October 3, 2018.

86 Caroline Freund and Sarah Oliver, “The Origins of the Superrich: The Billionaire Characteristics Database,” Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper no. 16–1, February 2016.

87 Catherine Clifford, “The Habits of Self‐​Made Billionaires (Infographic),” Entrepreneur, April 29, 2013.

88 Wealth‐​X, “Billionaire Census 2019,” May 9, 2019, p. 19.

89 Wealth‐​X, “World Ultra Wealth Report 2019,” September 2019, p. 20.

90 BMO Private Bank, “BMO Private Bank Changing Face of Wealth Study: Two‐​Thirds of Nation’s Wealthy Are Self Made Millionaires,” news release, June 13, 2013.

91 U.S. Trust, “2015 U.S. Trust Insights on Wealth and Worth Survey,” May 28, 2015, p. 26.

92 Edward N. Wolff and Maury Gittleman, “Inheritances and the Distribution of Wealth,” U.S. Department of Labor Working Paper no. 445, January 2011, Table 8. Interestingly, the authors found that inheritances tend to equalize household wealth distributions in the economy, not widen them.

93 Lena Edlund and Wojciech Kopczuk, “Women, Wealth and Mobility,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 13162, June 2007.

94 Tino Sanandaji, “Piketty’s Missing Entrepreneurs,” National Review, November 13, 2014. This is the top 0.1 percent of income. The figure for the top 0.1 percent in wealth is 57 percent. See also Arvid Malm and Tino Sanandaji, “The Role of Entrepreneurship in Rising Wealth and Income Inequality,” Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies (Sweden), June 2015, Tables 7 and 9.

95 Mariacristina De Nardi, Phil Doctor, and Spencer D. Krane, “Evidence on Entrepreneurs in the United States: Data from the 1989–2004 Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Economic Perspectives (4Q 2007): 18–36.

96 Kopczuk, “Evolution of Top Wealth Shares,” p. 3.

97 Emily Ekins, The Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey (Washington: Cato Institute, 2019). YouGov in collaboration with the Cato Institute collected responses on March 5–8, 2019, from 1,700 adults. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.2 percentage points. Results have been weighted to be nationally representative.

98 William D. Nordhaus, “Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 10433, April 2004.

99 For a backgrounder on the topic, see Matthew D. Mitchell, The Pathology of Privilege: The Economic Consequences of Government Favoritism (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center, 2014).

100 Jonathan Tamari, “The System Is ‘Corrupt,’ ‘Rigged,’ Not ‘for Working People’: Why 2020 Democrats Sometimes Sound a Bit Like Trump,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2019.

101 In a 2019 YouGov/​Cato poll, 84 percent of Americans agreed that “there is nothing wrong with a person trying to make as much money as they honestly can,” while just 15 percent disagreed. Ekins, Welfare, Work, and Wealth.

102 N. Gregory Mankiw, “Spreading the Wealth Around: Reflections Inspired by Joe the Plumber,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 15846, March 2010, p. 16.

103 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Library, 1776), book 1, chap. XI, p. 372.

104 For a discussion of how protectionism hits poor consumers disproportionately, see Ryan Bourne, “Government and the Cost of Living: Income‐​Based vs. Cost‐​Based Approaches to Alleviating Poverty,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 847, September 4, 2018.

105 Chris Edwards, “Agricultural Subsidies,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, April 16, 2018.

106 U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Crop Insurance: Reducing Subsidies for Highest Income Participants Could Save Federal Dollars with Minimal Effect on the Program,” GAO-15–356, March 2015, p. 12.

107 John C. Beghin and Amani Elobeid, Analysis of the U.S. Sugar Program (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 2017).

108 Justin Villamil, “These Sugar Barons Built an $8 Billion Fortune with Washington’s Help,” Bloomberg, August 9, 2017; and Chris Edwards, “Federal Sugar Program and Chicago Jobs,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, December 13, 2013.

109 Bourne, “Approaches to Alleviating Poverty.”

110 Jonathan Macey, “The Rise of Crony Capitalism,” Defining Ideas, Hoover Institution, February 11, 2016.

111 Chris Edwards, “Navy Scandal: Classic Government Corruption,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, February 2, 2018.

112 Craig Whitlock, “The Man Who Seduced the 7th Fleet,” Washington Post, May 27, 2016.

113 Chris Edwards, “Energy Subsidies,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, December 15, 2016.

114 Eric Lipton and John M. Broder, “In Rush to Assist a Solar Company, U.S. Missed Signs,” New York Times, September 22, 2011.

115 “Greenlighting Solyndra,” graphic, Washington Post, December 2011.

116 Rich Lowry, “Obama’s Bad Bet on Green Energy,” RealClearPolitics, September 2, 2011.

117 Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig, “Solyndra Tried to Influence Energy Department, E‐​mails Show,” Washington Post, November 16, 2011.

118 Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig, “White House Pushed $500 Million Loan to Solar Company Now under Investigation,” Washington Post, September 13, 2011.

119 Gaby Galvin, “The 10 Richest Counties in the U.S.,” U.S. News and World Report, December 6, 2018.

120 Regarding federal compensation, see Chris Edwards, “Reforming Federal Worker Pay and Benefits,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, August 2, 2019.

121 Chris Edwards, “Independence in 1776; Dependence in 2014,” Cato at Liberty, Cato Institute, July 3, 2014.

122 “Reg Stats,” Regulatory Studies Center, George Washington University, https://​reg​u​la​to​rys​tud​ies​.columbian​.gwu​.edu/​r​e​g​-​stats.

123 George J. Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” in Chicago Studies in Political Economy, ed. George J. Stigler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 209; and Christopher Carrigan and Cary Coglianese, “George J. Stigler, ‘The Theory of Economic Regulation,’” in The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Public Policy and Administration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 287.

124 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 14th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1962), p. 29.

125 James C. Miller III, Monopoly Politics (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1999), p. 28. The agency was dismantled in the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 and went out of existence in 1985.

126 “Corruption Perceptions Index 2018,” Transparency International.

127 “Worldwide Government Indicators,” World Bank.

128 World Justice Project, Rule of Law Index (Washington: World Justice Project, 2019).

129 Calculations by authors.

130 Sutirtha Bagchi and Jan Švejnar, “Billionaires and Growth,” in Milken Institute Review, January 19, 2016, p. 54; and Sutirtha Bagchi and Jan Švejnar, “Does Wealth Inequality Matter for Growth? The Effect of Billionaire Wealth, Income Distribution, and Poverty,” Institute of Labor Economics Discussion Paper no. 7733, November 2013.

131 Bagchi and Švejnar emailed the authors their underlying data set.

132 “The Party Winds Down,” The Economist, May 7, 2016; “Comparing Crony Capitalism around the World,” The Economist, May 5, 2016; and “The Crony‐​Capitalism Index,” infographic, The Economist, 2016.

133 The list of sectors said to be prone to crony capitalism comprised casinos, ports, airports, oil, defense, deposit‐​taking banking and investment banking, utilities and telecoms services, and infrastructure and pipelines.

134 “Party Winds Down.”

135 Tina Nguyen, “Bernie Introduces His Own Plan to Eat the Rich,” Vanity Fair, February 1, 2019.

136 Scott Rasmussen, “Voters Rate Political Corruption as America’s Biggest Crisis,” RealClearPolitics, April 25, 2019.

137 Smith, Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), volume 2, book IV, chap. IX, p. 208.

138 Martin Feldstein, “Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation,” Journal of Political Economy 82 (September/​October 1974): 905–26; Martin Feldstein, “The Effect of Social Security on Saving,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 334, April 1979; and Martin Feldstein and Anthony Pellechio, “Social Security and Household Wealth Accumulation: New Microeconometric Evidence,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 61, no. 3 (August 1979): 361–68.

139 Feldstein recalculated the 1974 results in a 1980 study finding that “Social Security depresses saving by about fifty percent.” Martin Feldstein, “Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation: A Correction and Updating,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 579, November 1980.

140 Martin Feldstein and Jeffrey B. Liebman, “Social Security,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 8451, September 2001, p. 40; and Martin Feldstein, “Rethinking Social Insurance,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 11250, March 2005, p. 35.

141 Jagadeesh Gokhale and Laurence Kotlikoff, “The Impact of Social Security and Other Factors on the Distribution of Wealth,” in The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform, eds. Martin Feldstein and Jeffrey B. Liebman (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002), Tables 3.2 and 3.3.

142 Gokhale and Kotlikoff, “Impact of Social Security,” p. 106; and Jagadeesh Gokhale et al., “Simulating the Transmission of Wealth Inequity via Bequests,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 7183, June 1999.

143 Barış Kaymak and Markus Poschke, “The Evolution of Wealth Inequality over Half a Century: The Role of Taxes, Transfers and Technology,” Journal of Monetary Economics 77 (2016): 1–25.

144 Kaymak and Poschke, “Evolution of Wealth Inequality,” Table 4.

145 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Table 3.1, Government Current Receipts and Expenditures.”

146 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Government Current Receipts and Expenditures.”

147 Feldstein, “Social Security on Saving.”

148 Pirmin Fessler and Martin Schürz, “Private Wealth across European Countries: The Role of Income, Inheritance and the Welfare State,” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 19, no. 4 (2018): 521–549. The database includes 62,000 households.

149 Fessler and Schürz, “Private Wealth across European Countries,” p. 4.

150 Fessler and Schürz, Figure 2.

151 Carlotta Balestra and Richard Tonkin, “Inequalities in Household Wealth across OECD Countries: Evidence from the OECD Wealth Distribution Database,” Organisation for Economic Co‐​operation and Development Working Paper no. 88, June 20, 2018, Figure 2.3 and Table 2.1.

152 Credit Suisse Research Institute, “Global Wealth Databook 2018,” Table 3–1.

153 Credit Suisse Research Institute, “Global Wealth Databook 2014,” October 2014.

154 John Sablehouse and Alice Henriques Volz, “Are Disappearing Employer Pensions Contributing to Rising Wealth Inequality?,” FEDS Notes, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, February 1, 2019.

155 A similar estimate is in Devlin‐​Foltz, Henriques Volz, and Sabelhaus, “Rising Wealth Inequality,” p. 76.

156 Sebastian Devlin‐​Foltz, Alice Henriques Volz, and John Sabelhaus, “The Role of Social Security in Overall Retirement Resources: A Distributional Perspective,” FEDS Notes, Federal Reserve Board of Governors, July 29, 2016; and Devlin‐​Foltz, Henriques Volz, and Sabelhaus, “Rising Wealth Inequality.”

157 C. Eugene Steuerle and Caleb Quakenbush, Social Security and Medicare Lifetime Benefits and Taxes (Washington: Urban Institute, 2018); and Robert Lerman, “Can Social Security, Medicare Be Considered Wealth?,” PBS News Hour, September 28, 2011.

158 Kotlikoff, “Rich Always Get Richer?”

159 Chris Edwards and Michael Tanner, “Reforming Social Security Retirement,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, August 1, 2013.

160 Martin Feldstein, “Prefunding Medicare,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 6917, January 1999.

161 Chris Edwards and George Leef, “Failures of the Unemployment Insurance System,” Downsizing the Federal Government, Cato Institute, June 1, 2011.

162 Some types of assets, including retirement accounts and automobiles, are typically excluded from the tests.

163 Michael Tanner, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor (Washington: Cato Institute, 2018).

164 For example, see Johnathan Gruber and Aaron Yelowitz, “Public Health Insurance and Private Savings,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 6041, May 1997; R. Glenn Hubbard, Jonathan Skinner, and Stephen P. Zeldes, “Precautionary Saving and Social Insurance,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 4884, October 1994; Gordon McDonald, Peter R. Orszag, and Gina Russell, “The Effect of Asset Tests on Saving,” The Retirement Security Project, Economic Literature Review, June 2005; and Maureen Pirog and Edwin Gerrish, “TANF and SNAP Asset Limits and the Financial Behavior of Low‐​Income Households,” Pew Charitable Trusts, May 2017.

165 Bourne, “Approaches to Alleviating Poverty.”

166 Bourne, “Approaches to Alleviating Poverty.”

167 Edward L. Glaeser, Joseph Gyourko, and Raven Saks, “Why Is Manhattan So Expensive? Regulation and the Rise in Housing Prices,” Journal of Law and Economics 48, no. 2 (October 2005): 331–69.

168 Rognlie, “Net Capital Share.”

169 Odran Bonnet et al., “Does Housing Capital Contribute to Inequality? A Comment on Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century,” SciencesPo Economics Discussion Paper no. 2014-07, 2014.

170 David Albouy and Mike Zabek, “Housing Inequality,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 21916, January 2016.

171 Lawrence H. Summers, “The Inequality Puzzle,” book review, Democracy 32 (Summer 2014).

172 Bourne, “Approaches to Alleviating Poverty.”

173 Paul Krugman, “Oligarchy, American Style,” New York Times, November 3, 2011.

174 “Elizabeth Warren on Billionaires,” CNN, July 31, 2019, www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​L​9​m​W​G​x​J​d​J​U​0​&​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​=​y​o​u​tu.be.

175 Branko Milanović, “The Higher the Inequality, the More Likely We Are to Move Away from Democracy,” The Guardian, May 2, 2017.

176 Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Tax Hike Idea Is Not about Soaking the Rich,” opinion, New York Times, January 22, 2019.

177 Vanessa Williamson, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 Percent Tax on the Rich Isn’t about Revenue, It’s about Decreasing Inequality,” opinion, NBC News, January 26, 2019.

178 J. Alexander Branham, Stuart N. Soroka, and Christopher Wlezien, “When Do the Rich Win?,” Political Science Quarterly 132, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 43–62. They pointed to a number of studies, including Stuart N. Soroka and Christopher Wlezien, “On the Limits to Inequality in Representation,” PS: Political Science and Politics 41 (April 2008): 319–27.

179 Branham, Soroka, and Wlezien, “When Do the Rich Win?,” pp. 43–62.

180 Quoted in John York, “Does Rising Income Inequality Threaten Democracy?,” Backgrounder no. 3227, Heritage Foundation, June 30, 2017.

181 Pew Research Center, “2016 Party Identification Detailed Tables,” September 13, 2016.

182 Jonah Goldberg, “Mr. Piketty’s Big Book of Marxiness,” Commentary Magazine, American Enterprise Institute, July 1, 2014.

183 Support for distributional policies is derived from all roll call votes during the 111th‐​115th congresses if the “subject” query contained any of the following items: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, entitlement, CHIP, or SNAP.

184 A simple regression indicated that the wealth of Democratic members was statistically significant in explaining the votes, whereas the wealth of Republican members was not.

185 Alma Cohen et al., “The Politics of CEOs,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 25815, May 2019.

186 Martin Gilens, Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

187 Benjamin I. Page, Larry M. Bartels, and Jason Seawright, “Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans,” Perspectives on Politics 11, no. 1 (March 2013): 51–73.

188 Tyler Cowen, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti‐​Hero (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

189 Gilens, Affluence and Influence.

190 Gilens, Affluence and Influence.

191 See, for example, Omar S. Bashir, “Testing Inferences about American Politics: A Review of the Oligarchy Result,” Research and Politics 2, no. 4 (October 2015): 1–7.

192 In 2019, Social Security, Medicare, education, and transportation spending accounted for 47 percent of noninterest federal spending. See Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2020 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2019).

193 York, “Income Inequality Threaten Democracy?”

194 Branham, Soroka, and Wlezien, “When Do the Rich Win?,” pp. 43–62.

195 Eric Brunner, Stephen L. Ross, and Ebonya Washington, “Does Less Income Mean Less Representation?,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5, no. 2 (May 2013): 53–76.

196 David O. Sears and Carolyn L. Funk, “The Limited Effect of Economic Self‐​Interest on the Political Attitudes of the Mass Public,” Journal of Behavioral Economics 19, no. 3 (Autumn 1990): 247–71; and Bryan Caplan, “Libertarianism against Economism: How Economists Misunderstand Voters, and Why Libertarians Should Care,” Independent Review 5, no. 4 (Spring 2001): 539–63.

197 Stephen G. Bronars and John R. Lott Jr., “Do Campaign Donations Alter How a Politician Votes? Or, Do Donors Support Candidates Who Value the Same Things That They Do?,” Journal of Law & Economics 40, no. 2 (October 1997): 317–50.

198 Thomas Stratmann, “Some Talk: Money in Politics. A (Partial) Review of the Literature,” Public Choice 124, no. 1/2 (July 2005): 135–56.

199 Stephen Ansolabehere, John M. de Figueiredo, and James M. Snyder Jr., “Why Is There So Little Money in Politics?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 105–30.

200 Ansolabehere, de Figueiredo, and Snyder, “Little Money in Politics?,” pp. 105–30.

201 U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Government Current Receipts and Expenditures.”

202 Income share and social spending data from the Organisation for Economic Co‐​operation and Development at https://​stats​.oecd​.org.

203 “Social Spending,” Organisation for Economic Co‐​operation and Development, https://​data​.oecd​.org/​s​o​c​i​a​l​e​x​p​/​s​o​c​i​a​l​-​s​p​e​n​d​i​n​g.htm. The OECD further notes that “benefits may be targeted at low‐​income households, the elderly, disabled, sick, unemployed, or young persons.”

204 Maggie Koerth‐​Baker, “How Money Affects Elections,” FiveThirtyEight, September 10, 2018; and Steven D. Leavitt, “Using Repeat Challengers to Estimate the Effect of Campaign Spending on Election Outcomes in the U.S. House,” Journal of Political Economy 102, no. 4 (August 1994): 777–98.

205 Bill Allison et al., “Tracking the Presidential Money Race,” Bloomberg, December 9, 2016.

206 Meg Fowler, “The Most Expensive Failed Primary Campaigns,” ABC News, February 1, 2012.

207 Lindsay Young, “Final Look at Outside Spenders’ 2012 Return on Investment,” Sunlight Foundation, May 16, 2013.

208 Young, “2012 Return on Investment.”

209 Dan Eggen and T. W. Farnam, “Spending by Independent Groups Had Little Impact on Election, Analysis Finds,” Washington Post, November 7, 2012.

210 Adam R. Brown, M. V. Hanna, and Jon S. Corzine, “What Money Can’t Buy: Self‐​Financed Candidates in Gubernatorial Elections,” prepared for the Ninth Annual Conference on State Politics and Policy, 2009.

211 Andrew Prokrop, “Really Rich People Aren’t Actually That Good at Buying Their Way into Political Office,” Vox, June 5, 2016.

212 “Most Important Problem,” Gallup, https://​news​.gallup​.com/​p​o​l​l​/​1​6​7​5​/​m​o​s​t​-​i​m​p​o​r​t​a​n​t​-​p​r​o​b​l​e​m​.aspx.

213 Graham Wright, “The Political Implications of American Concerns about Economic Inequality,” Political Behavior 40, no. 2 (June 2018): 321–43.

214 Karlyn Bowman, “Eliminating the Estate Tax: Where Is the Public?,” Forbes, October 31, 2017.

215 Ekins, Welfare, Work, and Wealth.

216 Ekins.