My wife and I are fortunate. We're not wealthy by our standards, but I do recognize that we certainly would be considered wealthy by a lot of Americans. Our household income is about 4-5x the national average, and we have no children.

My understanding of the stats informs me that our household income puts us in the top 2.5%. Certainly a very blessed situation to be in, and one that we both work very hard to achieve.

But here's the striking truth about wealth distribution in our country...

The power-law-ish distribution of our wealth means that quantitatively, as a percentile, I'm much closer to the "1%" than I am to the "50%". But qualitatively, the struggles I face -- saving for retirement, knowing that if I had a serious illness our cash flow would dry up, etc -- my life is nothing like the "1%".

Another way to put it... I'm near the very top of the small pile of wealth shared by normal Americans.

I'm having a hard time properly articulating this but I think you get the point. It's almost as if, by percentile, you'd think "wow, I really have earned a big slice of this pie" only to find out that more than half the pie was taken by 0.5% of Americans before it was ever put on the shelf to cool. That until you're invited to take a sliver from that first half, you'll never get more than crumbs of the share that's split 298.5 Million ways.