The stinking rich

The 400 people on Forbes magazine's list of the richest Americans saw their combined net worth climb 8 percent this year. The good news for the wealthy comes as the poverty rate has reached a 15-year high and unemployment remains stuck near 10 percent.

Timothy Noah defines the wealthy in three categories: the sort-of rich are those who make more than $100,000; the rich — those in the top 1 percent — earn more than $360,000; and stinking rich — those in the .01 percent — make more than $1 million.

"A lot of people say, 'So what if we have unequal incomes? We have a great deal of mobility in the United States. Anybody can grow up to be president.' But in truth, social mobility has actually decreased over the last 40 years," Noah says. "There's still a fervent belief that that is what defines the United States, but it is less true now than it used to be."


Americans vastly underestimate the degree of wealth inequality in America. "Building a Better America -- One Wealth Quintile At A Time" by Dan Ariely of Duke University and Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School , shows that across ideological, economic and gender groups, Americans thought the richest 20 percent of our society controlled about 59 percent of the wealth, while the real number is closer to 84 percent.