We’ve moved from income world to wealth world 

Financial Times UK 1 Aug 2026 John Burn-Mur doch john.burn-mur doch@ft.com 

Con cerns about wealth inequal ity have grown in recent years, with calls for wealth taxes now recur rent fea tures of polit ical dis course on both sides of the Atlantic. It is often poin ted out in response that most meas ures of wealth inequal ity show little to no change over the same period. 

Taken at face value, this argu ment is reas on able. The share of wealth held by the top 10 per cent in the US, UK and Europe has been flat or fall ing for the past 15 years. Even if we zoom in on the top 1 per cent, their share of wealth is no higher today than it was 15 years ago (although it had been climb ing before this period in some places). But I’m not sure this answer addresses what lies behind the under ly ing con cern. Stand ard meas ures of wealth inequal ity tell us how evenly wealth is dis trib uted in rel at ive terms. 

This is an import ant concept but just as import ant, if not more so, is the extent to which one can move up or down that dis tri bu tion. If mac roe co nomic con di tions lead every one’s wealth to double, rel at ive shares for the top and bot tom are unchanged. But if that wealth boom is not matched by a cor res pond ing rise in wages (the abil ity to earn one’s way up that dis tri bu tion), sud denly the same-sized rel at ive gaps mat ter much more, reshap ing how the eco nomy both feels and func tions. 

In a soci ety where the gap between the com fort ably off and the just-get ting-star ted can be crossed in a dec ade or two of hard work, suc cess feels attain able and incent ives are strong. When those gaps are so wide that even a life time of striv ing doesn’t offer the pro spect of feel ing you’ve “made it”, things start to break down. 

This is essen tially what has been play ing out in many coun tries over recent dec ades. While wealth inequal ity has not changed much, the rel at ive import ance of wealth com pared to income has. The median house hold’s dis pos able net worth (net prop erty and fin an cial wealth exclud ing pen sions) in the UK, US, Ger many and France has roughly doubled in real terms since the mid-1990s; incomes have grown by only around 30 per cent. 

The res ult is that where a gen er a tion ago it would have taken about 20 years of sav ings from the aver age salary to earn your way from the bot tom quarter of the UK’s wealth dis tri bu tion to the top quarter, it now takes 40. There are sim ilar or even lar ger upward exten sions to soci ety’s eco nomic lad der else where.

This is all the more per ni cious since the grow ing role of pass ive wealth gains (whether gif ted by an asset price boom or one’s par ents) rel at ive to income in determ in ing someone’s eco nomic status is mirrored by their grow ing import ance for well being. In the 1990s income rank mattered more than wealth rank for life sat is fac tion or avoid ing dis tress. Since then wealth has become stead ily more influ en tial and is now the lar ger driver. 

Much has been writ ten about the harm ful side-effects of bru tally mer ito cratic soci et ies, but the elev a tion over the past gen er a tion of pass ively acquired wealth over earned income in determ in ing fin an cial stand ing — even as wealth inequal ity itself has barely budged — deserves equal dis cus sion. It has surely played a role in the build-up of resent ment towards those at the top, whether bil lion aires or acci dental prop erty mil lion aires. 

It would be remiss not to con sider also the role of today’s bil lion aires in shap ing pub lic views on wealth. Where the gil ded class of the much more plu to cratic early 20th cen tury engaged in hi g hl y vis ible phil an thropy, and often kept their polit ical involve ment more fin an cial than vocal, today’s cohort is the oppos ite. 

The most obvi ous case is Elon Musk, whose loud inter ven tions in polit ics at home and abroad have angered mil lions and sent his pop ular ity tum bling, and whose sharp cuts to US over seas devel op ment spend ing could argu ably be described as “anti-phil an thropy”. Then there is the fact that the products and ser vices that gen er ated the wealth of some tech bar ons are a recur ring source of angst for many people, in part because they dis pro por tion ately high light the lives of the most well-off. 

With wealth increas ingly out musc ling income, earn ing one’s way up the lad der more and more unreal istic, and fre quent inflam mat ory inter ven tions into daily life from the world’s wealth i est, it’s hardly sur pris ing that con cerns about wealth are on the rise, even if inequal ity itself may not be.