Why America’s Real Wealth Isn’t in Silicon Valley

So there are 3 million everywhere millionaires in the United States. Those are private business owners who have at least $5 million in net worth. And if you add up their collective net worth, it's 13 times the total wealth of the richest 400 people. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. Who do you think of when I ask you to picture the person who represents the most wealth that is held in the United States?

I'll take a moment. I imagine you are thinking of somebody like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, somebody who is a member of the Forbes 400, somebody who is at the very top. of the income distribution in the United States with 0.0001%. Well, as it turns out, there is a much larger group of everyday, everywhere millionaires who cumulatively hold vastly more wealth than the richest people. in America.

The millions of people who have more than $5 million in net worth because they own your local car dealership, your local uh garage door repair service, your local HVAC company, and so on and so forth. And if we want to understand how America really works, where wealth really accumulates and what that means for how to build a better economy, and Newbrook argues, then it's those kinds of rich people that we need to look at. That is the argument of Owen Zidder and Eric Zwick in The Everywhere Millionaire, who is really rich in America and how they got there. Owen is a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton.

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