Free market champions reading the Pew chart see percentages rise more sharply in the very richest category and jump to the conclusion that the chances of becoming rich are increasing. But the reason for that sharp rise is that there are fewer rich people than poor people in absolute numbers. There are about 46 million Americans living below the poverty line. In contrast, there are some 10 million folks in the U.S. living in millionaire households.

According to Pew, there are 120.8 million adults living in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million who are in upper- or lower-income households; 9 percent are in the highest quintile, and 20 percent are in the lowest. It’s clear from the Pew report that the people who have the biggest incomes have been pulling away from the pack in terms of their share of wealth — a trend that shows no sign of slowing.

“The share of U.S. aggregate household income held by upper-income households climbed sharply, from 29 percent in 1970 to 49 percent in 2014,” Pew states. “More recently, upper-income families, which had three times as much wealth as middle-income families in 1983, more than doubled the wealth gap; by 2013, they had seven times as much wealth as middle-income families.”

There may be a few more people joining the ranks of the rich, but the real news is that those who are already rich are getting much, much richer.

Worstall is right about one thing: Our political biases influence the story we attach to numbers. The laissez-faire defenders want so badly to erase the problem of inequality and reduced prosperity for the bulk of Americans that their brains fail to read simple charts and employ elementary logic.

They do not want to believe that more Americans are becoming worse off, because this development flies in the face of the big free market promises made by Milton Friedman and his followers — that unfettered capitalism will deliver the best outcomes to society. But if you take off the ideological blinders, it’s easy to read the plain numbers on the wall. A giant chunk of Americans is sinking economically, and we need to focus on policies that aid the drowning and make room for ordinary people among all the mega-yachts.