Bernie Sanders' income inequality statistic is very misleading


"Is the economy rigged?" asks Sen. Bernie Sanders in a new presidential campaign ad. "Well, the 15 richest Americans acquired more wealth in two years than the bottom 100 million people combined."
Sanders isn't technically lying: As the Washington Post calculates, the 15 richest people in America collectively gained $170 billion between 2013 and 2015, and the poorest 138 million Americans (the bottom 43 percent) have a combined worth of just $134 billion. That's a big disparity.
But what Sanders doesn't mention is that net worth calculation includes debts. So, for example, a recent Harvard Law graduate with a $200,000 annual income plus $100,000 in student loans and a $600,000 mortgage debt is probably living a comfortable upper middle class life — with a negative net worth.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In fact, the bottom 40 percent of Americans collectively have so much debt that Sanders himself is wealthier than all of them put together with his relatively modest net worth of $330,000.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
'The program long ago ceased to be temporary help'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Denmark to grill US envoy on Greenland spying report
speed read The Trump administration ramped up spying on Greenland, says reporting by The Wall Street Journal
-
Rust: Alec Baldwin's 'ghoulish' western haunted by real-life death
Talking Point The film's only saving grace is the late Halyna Hutchins's 'gorgeous' cinematography
-
Denmark to grill US envoy on Greenland spying report
speed read The Trump administration ramped up spying on Greenland, says reporting by The Wall Street Journal
-
Supreme Court allows transgender troop ban
speed read The US Supreme Court will let the Trump administration begin executing its ban on transgender military service members
-
Hollywood confounded by Trump's film tariff idea
speed read President Trump proposed a '100% tariff' on movies 'produced in foreign lands'
-
Trump offers migrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'
speed read The Department of Homeland Security says undocumented immigrants can leave the US in a more 'dignified way'
-
Trump is not sure he must follow the Constitution
speed read When asked about due process for migrants in a TV interview, President Trump said he didn't know whether he had to uphold the Fifth Amendment
-
Trump judge bars deportations under 1798 law
speed read A Trump appointee has ruled that the president's use of a wartime act for deportations is illegal
-
Trump ousts Waltz as NSA, taps him for UN role
speed read President Donald Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser and nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
-
Trump blames Biden for tariffs-linked contraction
speed read The US economy shrank 0.3% in the first three months of 2025, the Commerce Department reported