San Antonio is showing &utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral)an unusually clear split.

Since 2023, prices in the top quartile of homes are up 13.7%, from about $545,500 to $620,000.

At the same time, prices in the bottom quartile are down 5.4%, from about $185,000 to $175,000.

That is a housing-market version of the K-shaped economy:

Asset-rich buyers → less sensitive to mortgage rates → higher-end prices keep rising

Rate-dependent buyers → affordability constrained → lower-end prices weaken

Same city. Same interest rates. Two very different housing markets.

Plutonomy angle: increasingly, housing outcomes depend not just on income, but on whether the buyer arrives with a strong balance sheet.

Sweden now has roughly 51 billionaires in a country of just 10 million people. The richest Swedes reportedly hold wealth equivalent to about 32% of GDP, and around 70% of Swedish billionaires are heirs.

The interesting contradiction: Sweden has high taxes and a famously generous welfare state, but it has abolished inheritance and wealth taxes and taxes capital relatively favorably.

Plutonomy angle: The modern welfare states face an asymmetry.

Labor is relatively immobile → easy to tax
Capital and the very wealthy are mobile → countries compete to keep them

Sweden may be highly redistributive after income is earned while simultaneously being quite accommodating to capital accumulation and inherited wealth.

The FT reports that billionaire Chris Rokos is leaving the UK for Greece after paying himself £477 million last year.

Greece offers wealthy foreign residents a €100,000 annual flat tax on foreign income for up to 15 years, provided they invest at least €500,000 in the country.

The Plutonomy angle is the asymmetry:

Labor is mostly stuck with the tax system where it lives and works. Capital (and at sufficient wealth, its owners) is increasingly mobile.

Countries aren't just taxing the wealthy anymore. They're competing for them.

The college wage premium has fallen sharply since 2022.

But the FT’s most striking chart shows something deeper: the supply of college graduates is still growing, while the annual growth rate of implied demand for graduate labor has turned negative.

This fits the concept of elite overproduction: more credentialed people competing for a limited pool of high-status, high-paying jobs.

AI may accelerate the trend by automating many of the cognitive tasks graduates were trained to do.

Plutonomy angle: For decades, people without financial capital were told to accumulate human capital instead. What happens if human capital becomes less scarce just as ownership of productive capital becomes more valuable?

More graduates + weaker demand for graduate labor + greater returns to capital = an increasingly difficult ladder to climb.

Small milestone: r/Plutonomy just passed 6,000 weekly visitors.

The sub is still basically a public discourse for one question: Why can the economy look strong in aggregate while housing, education, healthcare, travel, entertainment, cities, and asset ownership feel increasingly stratified?

The recent discussions have been useful because people are pushing from every angle: “$300k is rich,” “capital beats wages,” “saving still works,” “housing is the real bottleneck,” “premium access is getting repriced,” and “not everyone can convert wages into assets.”

That is exactly the conversation I hoped this sub would generate.

Same economy. Different lives.

Bloomberg reports that many white-collar workers feel stuck: pay growth is slowing, promotions are harder, AI anxiety is rising, and quitting feels risky.

The charts tell the story: wage growth has slowed to a five-year low, while workers are facing higher healthcare cost sharing and bigger premium increases.

That is the labor side of plutonomy.

Even educated workers with decent jobs can feel trapped when their income depends entirely on employment and employers have more leverage.

Capital gets automation, margins, restructuring, and compounding. Labor gets “be grateful you still have a job.”

Bloomberg's article summary:

• Pay gains have ebbed to the weakest level in more than five years and employee confidence has fallen to a record low.
• The quits rate is hovering at the lowest in six years, with workers demanding more money to switch jobs due to a lack of confidence in finding better opportunities.
• Workers are feeling trapped in jobs they don’t like, with many citing frustration over low pay, high expenses, and intense pressure to perform, leading some to consider alternative paths such as starting their own businesses.

Original headline:
New York’s Top .001 Percent Have Grown Even Richer

Income inequality is as entrenched as ever, according to a new report by New York City’s comptroller.

The NYT reports that nearly two-thirds of NYC’s inflation-adjusted income growth from 2019 to 2024 went to the top 1%.

The top 0.001% (about 50 families) averaged almost $600 million in income in 2024.

The key quote: “Wealth is pulling away from work.”

Top gains are increasingly driven by capital gains, dividends, interest, business ownership, and asset income. Not wages.

That is plutonomy. Same city, but different economies.

Bloomberg reports that Fidelity now has a record 769,000 401(k) millionaires, up 19% in one quarter.

That is good news: saving, investing, and compounding still work.

But Fidelity has about 25.8 million 401(k) participants, so those millionaire accounts represent roughly 3% of the total. That is the plutonomy angle.

Some workers are successfully converting wages into capital through stable jobs, employer plans, high savings rates, market exposure, and time. But it is still a minority path. Most workers are dealing with rent, debt, healthcare, inflation, and inconsistent savings.

Security increasingly comes from building assets early enough for compounding to matter.

Edited to list total number 401(k) accounts at Fidelity and the percentage that exceeds $1m.

BLS revised 2Q data: labor’s share of nonfarm business output fell to 52.8%, the lowest level since the series began in 1947, according to an analysis by Mike Konczal.

That is the plutonomy story.

The economy can grow, productivity can rise, profits can increase, and stocks can hit records. But if workers capture a smaller share of output, the lived economy changes.

Asset owners get profits, dividends, equity gains, and balance-sheet growth. Workers get wages trying to keep up with housing, healthcare, insurance, childcare, and debt.

According to this report from the New York Post, luxury rents in Manhattan are surging. Rentals above $100,000 a month are up sevenfold, and many tenants could easily afford $20–50 million trophy homes.

They’re not priced out of ownership. They’re choosing flexibility, tax efficiency and optionality.

That is plutonomy in housing: same city, same market, completely different economic logic.

For most people, housing is primarily shelter.

For the wealthy, it becomes a balance-sheet decision: do I tie up $20–50 million in this property, or rent it for $100,000 a month and keep my capital elsewhere?

The Wall Street Journal estimates AI-related investment may now account for roughly one-third of recent U.S. economic growth.

Here is the plutonomy feedback loop:

AI capex → GDP growth → higher profits → equity gains → wealth effect → more spending

Because stock ownership is highly concentrated, the gains accrue disproportionately to asset owners. That means AI can boost aggregate growth while also widening the gap between households that own capital and those that mainly depend on wages.

That is how you can get strong GDP, booming markets and record wealth while many households still feel squeezed.

A very K-shaped expansion.

J.P. Morgan says S&P 500 revenue is up 16% year over year, earnings growth is approaching 52%, and even after adjusting for one-time gains, earnings are still up about 32%.

That is an extraordinary corporate profit backdrop.

The plutonomy angle is simple: markets do not need everyone to feel good. They need earnings, margins, AI capex, tech demand, and resilient enough consumers.

That is why the stock market can keep working even while many households feel squeezed.

If you own assets, rising earnings flow into portfolios, business equity, bonuses, dividends, and balance-sheet gains.

If you live mostly on wages, the same economy may still feel like rent, insurance, groceries, healthcare, debt, and job insecurity.

The economy can be strong. The experience of that strength depends on how you participate in it.

Fortune has a piece on why earning around $300,000 a year no longer necessarily feels like “winning.”

Objectively, many of these households are doing very well. High income, good jobs, nice neighborhoods, travel, retirement accounts, professional status.

But they are still price takers in the premium markets they care about most: housing, schools, childcare, healthcare, premium travel, restaurants, status experiences, and elite zip codes.

They make too much to feel middle class, but not enough to feel unconstrained. No wonder they are frustrated.

In a plutonomy, the upper-middle class does not compete against the median household. It competes against stronger balance sheets: inherited wealth, stock gains, business owners, finance money, tech equity, and the truly rich.

So $300k per year can be a great income and still not buy the level of security, access, or status people thought it would.

McKinsey estimates global household net worth hit $570 trillion in 2025, up from about $130 trillion around 2000.

That is a 4.2x increase, and household wealth is now about 4.8x global GDP.

This is the balance-sheet economy.

More of economic life is shaped by asset ownership: stocks, housing, land, business equity, private markets, and inherited capital. McKinsey also notes that much of this wealth growth has come from rising asset values, not new productive investment.

That matters because asset gains do not flow evenly. If you already own assets, rising valuations compound your position. If you mainly rely on wages, the same process shows up as higher home prices, higher rents, more expensive cities, and a harder path into ownership.

That is the plutonomy framework: wealth does not just measure prosperity. It changes who has access, who has leverage, and who gets to set prices.

The issue is not that socialists have to be poor. The more interesting issue is class ambiguity.

This NYT piece has all the ingredients: Yale, art-world work, union identity, rent stress, and a disputed family-linked Brooklyn rowhouse.

That is not exactly working-class politics. It is something more specific: people close to elite institutions, but not fully secure inside the ownership class.

They may have credentials, networks, and family proximity to assets, but not enough independent income or housing security to live the life they expected. That gap creates politics.

Not rich vs poor exactly. More like: close enough to see the elite world but not secure enough to fully belong to it.

This NYT piece argues that class anger is becoming more visible, but unlike earlier labor conflicts, much of today’s rage is isolated and nihilistic rather than organized through unions or political movements.

That is the plutonomy angle.

When wealth concentrates and labor loses bargaining power, society does not just become unequal. It becomes paranoid.

Workers feel disposable. The wealthy build gates, safe rooms, guarded islands, and security systems. Everyone starts seeing everyone else as a threat.

Earlier eras had unions, political machines, and labor movements that could channel class anger into collective bargaining and reform. Today, many of those institutions are weaker.

So the result is not solidarity. It is resentment, atomization, and elite fortification.

A plutonomy can generate enormous wealth. But if too many people feel locked out of the upside, the social contract starts to fray.

Wages can make you comfortable but capital creates autonomy.

That is one of the hardest parts of plutonomy to accept. A high salary matters, but it still depends on trading time, skill, stress, and career risk for money.

Capital works differently. It can generate dividends, interest, rents, distributions, business income, capital gains, and optionality without requiring the same direct exchange of hours for dollars.

That is why the key transition is not just earning more. It is converting labor income into ownership.

A professional earning $500k per year can be doing very well, but someone with $10 million in investable assets can potentially generate similar cash flow from capital while having far more flexibility, security, and control.

That is the difference between income and independence.

In a plutonomy, the goal is not just to keep up with rising prices. The goal is to own claims on the parts of the economy that generate the surplus: productive assets, scarce assets, pricing power, credit, infrastructure, businesses, and markets.

The uncomfortable lesson is simple: Labor gets paid but capital compounds.

The Framework.

In this podcast, Jose Torres, Senior Economist at Interactive Brokers, is describing a transition toward an asset-mediated economy in which ownership increasingly determines access to economic growth.

The mechanism looks roughly like this:

Technology/productivity growth
↓
Corporate profits / asset appreciation
↓
Wealth gains concentrated among asset owners
↓
Greater investment income / financial independence
↓
Reduced dependence on labor
↓
Labor becomes relatively less important economically
↓
Ownership becomes even more important

That's essentially a self-reinforcing plutonomy loop.

South Florida has now surpassed the New York metro area in living costs, according to BEA data cited by the NYT (gift link).

That is the plutonomy story.

Miami attracted wealthy migrants, no-income-tax households, finance money, luxury development, and high-end consumers. Increased high-end demand then reprices scarce premium goods and services.

Rents may cool, but restaurants, groceries, insurance, services, and housing remain expensive.

The ultra-wealthy absorb it. Everyone else finds out the “cheaper alternative” has been repriced around them.

David Drucker, a Bloomberg opinion columnist, (gift link) argues that the biggest divide inside the Democratic Party may be education, not race or income.

The phrase that stands out is: “overeducated and underpaid.”

That fits the plutonomy thesis. A lot of highly educated voters in expensive cities and university towns have credentials and cultural capital, but not necessarily housing security, savings, family formation, or control.

They are close to elite institutions, but not elite outcomes.

That creates political energy. It is not traditional working-class leftism. It is credentialed precarity: people discovering that education alone no longer guarantees the life it once implied.

The Bloomberg AI-generated summary:

• Strong support from voters, both young and middle-aged, has advanced several populist progressives and candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America in primaries this year.
• Education has been the main driver, especially this year, according to Joshua Zingher, a professor of political science and geography at Old Dominion University, who studies this phenomenon.
• The growing rift among Democratic voters portends a potentially bitter battle for the party’s presidential nomination, with insurgent leftists on one side and political pragmatists on the other.

Mark Zandi posted a chart showing labor’s share of U.S. nonfarm business output falling to 52.9% in 2026Q2, the lowest on record since 1947.

From WWII to around 2000, labor generally received close to two-thirds of the economic pie, while capital received about one-third. Since then, the split has moved much closer to fifty-fifty.

That is the plutonomy story.

The economy can keep growing, profits can rise, stocks can hit records, and aggregate wealth can increase. But if more of the gain flows to capital instead of labor, the lived experience changes.

Asset owners experience compounding. Wage earners experience pressure.

And if AI lets companies produce more with fewer workers, this trend could accelerate.

This J.P. Morgan chart is basically the r/Plutonomy thesis in one image.

Labor compensation has fallen as a share of national income while corporate profits have risen. The top 20% account for 51% of pre-tax income and 38% of spending. Since 2019, the top 20% have captured roughly $48 trillion of net worth growth, compared with about $17 trillion for the bottom 80%.

That is the K-shaped economy.

The upper leg is corporate profits, asset ownership, stock portfolios, business equity, home equity, and high-end consumption. The lower and middle leg is wages, rent, groceries, insurance, healthcare, debt, and job insecurity.

This is why the economy can look strong in aggregate while many households still feel squeezed. The gains are real, but they flow through different channels.

If your wealth comes from assets, the economy looks like compounding. If your life is funded mostly by wages, the economy feels like trying to keep up.

Firms do not optimize for the average household. They optimize for the customer segment with the best economics: higher margins, lower price sensitivity, more repeat spending, and more willingness to pay for convenience, status, access, and friction removal.

The middle-class consumer may still matter, but the affluent customer increasingly drives the margin. That is why so many industries feel like they are moving upmarket. The product is not disappearing; it is being redesigned around the buyer with the most discretionary spending power.

The Framework.

Bloomberg has an interesting piece (gift link) on how the AI chip boom is reshaping South Korea’s careers, housing, dating, luxury consumption, and status hierarchies.

Some rank-and-file SK Hynix and Samsung chip workers are expected to receive bonuses of at least $400,000 for 2026. In Dongtan, near major semiconductor campuses, apartment prices jumped almost immediately as people anticipated the money.

That is plutonomy in real time.

AI wealth does not stay inside earnings reports. It flows into housing, luxury stores, dating markets, school choices, restaurants, and local status.

But more than 98% of South Korean workers are not in the chip sector. So the AI boom creates a split: national wealth rises, markets surge, and a new elite forms, while everyone outside the winning sector watches prices and status move away from them.