Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“We are closing in on the 20th anniversary of one of the most revealing pieces of bank analyst research in recent American history. On October 16, 2005, Citigroup released ‘an industry note’ for investors that started with a bracing statement: ‘The World is dividing into two blocs—the Plutonomy and the rest.’ Plutonomy is defined as an economy where, well, plutocrats provide the lion’s share of the economic activity and have a distortionary effect on economic statistics. One way to describe it is that if Bill Gates walked into a room with three laborers, the average wealth of all four in the room would be in the billions. But that wouldn’t tell you anything about the circumstances of the non–Bill Gates members of the sample, or how the economy feels to the ‘average’ person in the room.” (09/18/25)
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-09-18-plutonomy-still-going-strong/