Reply #3: kind of a moot point though, since there would be no practical way to liquidate it

[hfojvt]

However, the top 400 have a net worth of about $1.3 trillion
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/30/forbes-400-gates-buffett-wealth-rich-list-09_land.html

If you divided that equally among the 100 million households in America it would be a mere $13,000 per household.

for more on income distribution, check this out http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/123

for income, the percentages are this

Their (the 400 richest income tax filers) share of income was just 1.59% of all income. That is way up from the .49% it was in 1995, but still a fairly small slice. In 2005, those with incomes over $10 million (and there were 13,776 such families, including the fab 400) got 5.1% of all income. A table follows

income - number - percent of income (2005 IRS data)
>10,000,000 - 13,776 - 5.1
>5,000,000 - 21,431 - 2
>2,000,000 - 84,070 - 3.4
>1,500,000 - 56,615 - 1.3
>1,000,000 - 127,925 - 2.1
>500,000 - 524,506 - 4.8 (total 18.7% to top .67% of filers)
>200,000 - 2,737,802 - 10.6 (total 29.3% to top 2.67% of filers)
<25,000 - 57,898,144 - 9.2
all filers - 134,372,678

for wealth, check out this famous site

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/