Investing 100% of your post-tax income for 20 years is easy?

(Which would get you to three million by the way)

I'm saying there are plenty of people making $200k post-tax. Also, 7% annual returns combined with an additional $150k/yr would lead to having $6.5 million like I said.

To make $200K post-tax, you need to make at least $260K pre-tax. In the US, that puts you almost exactly at the boundary of the 1%.

I suppose this is a matter of your definition of "plenty of people".

There will be well over a million of the 1%ers by my reckoning (google says 122 million taxpayers), which is plenty by some reckoning..

1% of 300 million is still 3 million people. That's a lot of people making a lot of money.

Fewer than 5% of U.S. households [0] (or about 1.5% of working-age people [1]) bring in $200k per year. This is a big country, so I guess that's still "plenty of people," but it's not ordinary.

[0] https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Income

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-earn-200-000+-per-year...

> It's what was done in the 1950's, and there was still plenty of wealth then.

That time period was one of great prosperity that won't be repeated. Market returns were higher; most of the low hanging fruit has been plucked, and you can expect ~5% in equities returns. Its going to take far more capital now to get the same returns your grandparents had, which is why you see capital chasing returns across the world.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/07/get-ready-for-dramatically-l...

"The leaders of Vanguard Group, overseers of some $4 trillion in client assets, have been advising investors to expect a typical 60 percent stocks/40 percent bonds portfolio to deliver two- to- three percentage points less in nominal annual returns than its long-term norm. (Since 1926, such an asset mix has returned better than 8.5 percent annualized.)"

"Other forecasts are even less generous. Research Affiliates, a quantitative and "smart beta" fund manager, projects that U.S. stocks might only offer one percent a year for the next decade, after inflation. This is based largely on the so-called Shiller P/E, a ratio of the S&P 500 index to its trailing ten-year average earnings, which is now above 29 and higher than any period aside from the run-up to the 1929 and 2000 market peaks."

"And with risk-free 10-year government debt yielding a skimpy 2.3 percent in the U.S. and far less elsewhere, all other financial assets have repriced for skimpier future returns as well."

Then why not try to structure our economy so that the lower and middle classes have more money to spend? It seems like that would be a pretty good way to get the economy moving more since giving poorer people money increases the velocity of money considerably[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money

That's definitely the case, but the goal of modern politics and the top 1% is to accrue wealth, not generate it. Giving the middle classes more money to spend is great for the economy but it only accomplishes their goals if all that money ends up in their portfolios or assets, which means that eventually it all has to trickle up to the top.

Because that concept only works in an idyllic small town dominated by sole proprietors.

The example they provide

> Farmer spends $50 on tractor repair from mechanic. Mechanic buys $40 of corn from farmer. Mechanic spends $10 on barn cats from farmer.

does not involve stuff made abroad, massive corporations with economies of scale eliminating the middleman, or foreign-owned entities.

Most of that velocity will end up in China invested into another skyscraper ghost town, a massive infrastructure project or a cryptocurrency mining farm.

Then what do you recommend should be done? Because it should be obvious to most that increasing inequality, record-breaking corporate profits combined with a decreasing quality of life for most Americans outside of large cities is leading to a destabilization of our political system.

I agree entirely.

You can't save $150k a year if you make $200k per year. Your taxes on that income will be over $50k alone. And, even if they are small, you will have some expenses for food, shelter, clothing and transportation - and in most places to hold down a 200k job, you're going to need to half-decent wardrobe.