The French economist Thomas Piketty has estimated that in most European countries as late as 1900, 1 percent of the population owned about 50 percent of national wealth, and 10 percent of the population accounted for 90 percent of national wealth. The other 90 percent of the population made do with just 10 percent of national wealth. There was really no middle class in the modern sense because “the middle 40 percent of the wealth distribution were almost as poor as the bottom 50 percent. The vast majority of people owned virtually nothing, while the lion’s share of society’s assets belonged to
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