As we kickoff the fourth trading week of trading in January, below is a powerful email from a KWN reader about the death of the middle class in America:

From a KWN reader:  My favorite wealth redistribution chart shows that since 1988, the end of Reagan and beginning of Bush senior reign, the bottom 90% of the US has seen their wealth decline from 36% of total US wealth to only 23%, while the top .1% (135,000 tax payers) have seen their share of wealth grow from 10% to 23% of the total (comparable only to the Great Depression, see remarkable chart below).

With today’s US Net Worth at $90 trillion, what would it be like if the bottom 90% had (back) that lost 13%? It would be about $11.7 trillion divided into about 121 million taxpayers in the lower 90%, and each taxpayer in the lower 90% would have on average $100,000 more in net worth than they do today. That would have meant that on average the lower 90th percentile had put aside an additional $1,058 per year, each year, and earned 7% compound return on investment (7% is average for stocks including dividend and price appreciation in long term).

Assuming the average taxpayer savings/investment rate was 5%, then each taxpayer in lower 90th percentile would have had to earn about $20,000 more each year for the last 30 years. For all of the 121 million taxpayers in the lower 90th percentile in wealth in this country, imagine what a difference in our lives that would have made for ourselves and for our children…..more here